My game Delve gives out significant rewards in the form of useful connections and materials.  A recent session included a new tool to sculpt an unbreakable rock, and a creepy wizard offering info.  The players were very excited to tackle both opportunities.  They wound up spending a lot of time debating how much secret knowledge to share with the wizard in order to foster his cooperation, as well as debating what to make out of the rock.

Unfortunately, these situations arose at a moment in play when the players were tired of planning and wanted some action.

In Delve, I allow players to fast-forward through pretty much anything they want.  But it is our general practice, and it was my assumption when I established that option, that we will fast-forward mostly through situations that:
a) offer little uncertainty, and/or
b) won't be influenced very much by player decisions, and/or
c) aren't terribly important

And, indeed, my players chose to discuss what to tell the wizard and what to make from the rock, and these discussions took up a lot of time due to indecisiveness and the large number of possibilities and considerations.  This process became frustrating, because everyone was eager to go kill this smuggler dude who'd pissed them off. 

This problem seems unsolvable to me; like I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too.  I'm starting this thread in the hope that someone can offer a fresh perspective and see an option that I've missed.

Thanks,
-David

Hi David,

My immediate practical take is that you should have had the creepy wizard cough up the information - basically, considered it a "no conflict" situation, enjoyed playing the creepy guy in terms of pure Color, made it clear to the players that this is what you had for this scene/guy and there wasn't anything else to gain, and moved on.

Or if that isn't viable for some reason, to go all the way up to the Social Contract and say, "Guys, this is boring me senseless. I don't know what you're doing, it looks to me like you don't really know what you're doing, and my impression is that you really want to go kill the smuggler dude. Correct me if I'm wrong - but if I'm right, let's just cut to the point where you're setting up to kill that guy. I can tell you flat-out that I'm not holding out on you regarding anything you think you might be fishing for, regarding this creepy guy and the rock."

What I'm saying in Big Model at-the-Techniques terms, is that successful play of all kinds may only proceed when people understand when a given scene has provided the limits of what it can provide, or reached the limits of one person's ability to stay committed to contributing. Reaching that understanding occurs through many means. Sometimes that has to be stated from person to person, rather than being established through CRPG-game style, poke-every-pebble, cough-it-up, outlasting-style in-fiction actions.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Nah, these weren't "poke every pebble" moments.  As I said, that's the stuff we generally fast-forward through: stuff with no meaningful decisions.  Instead, the wizard interaction was ripe with decisions.  "Are we willing to give this guy info about us?  About things that could make him more powerful?  Can we concoct any clever lies?"  This sort of scene has often been very fun in the past -- especially when the players have come up with ways I hadn't anticipated to get info I hadn't planned on revealing.

The problem was that we just weren't in the mood for it this time.

Delve strives for a "What would you do if you were there?" experience based on character knowledge.  I've consistently found this less fun when combined with player-only knowledge (like, "guys, there's nothing else you could possibly gain here no matter what you do").  So my design intent is to resolve any slow scenes at the Social Contract level, by saying, "Let's speed through this."  I even made a little diagram to facilitate signalling on that front.

This usually works fine.*

The problem arrives in the form of decisions that the players do care about making ("create an unbreakable pick or an unbreakable shovel or something else?"), but aren't in the mood to ponder at the moment ("I want action!").

I've thought about enabling players to establish some character decisions retroactively (either facts only or full "flashback" scenes), by making decisions when they're ready to.  But I'm not sure how that could be structured: 

1) If you wait until it's obvious what the optimal outcome would be, then there's no real decision left ("Now that I know I'll need a shovel, let's go back and establish what we made yesterday.  I think I would have decided to make a shovel.").  Maybe the players wouldn't miss those decision opportunities too much if the outcomes were always optimal... but if the outcomes were always optimal, they'd never make decisions in advance!

2) If you wait until right before it's about to become obvious what the optimal outcome would be, then you risk interrupting a good dramatic/action sequence with a lot of pondering.

I haven't actually tried either of these yet.  I'm hoping there are other approaches that haven't occurred to me.  Ideas welcome!

Thanks,
-David

*We usually aim for compromise.  I wonder if "most bored player wins" would be better.

Hi David,

OK, let's see if I have this straight: the group was unable to extricate itself from persisting with a given series of rolls and indeed a particular scene as a whole, because they wanted to do it and cared about it, but weren't in the mood to do it. This is basically repeating one of your sentences. I trust you can see that this is not immediately easy to grasp, in logical terms. I will refrain from constructing any analogies to romantic relationship problems, because it'd be too easy.

I mean, musing about psychology aside, the fact is that what they're doing is fun-right-now, or it isn't. If it isn't, then ipso facto, they can't be "caring about it," or at least not enough to be "in the mood" actually for it. I'm very skeptical that they did in fact care about those "meaningful decisions," rather than somehow getting stuck.

Delve strives for a "What would you do if you were there?" experience based on character knowledge.

I've thought about enabling players to establish some character decisions retroactively (either facts only or full "flashback" scenes), by making decisions when they're ready to. But I'm not sure how that could be structured:

1) If you wait until it's obvious what the optimal outcome would be, then there's no real decision left ("Now that I know I'll need a shovel, let's go back and establish what we made yesterday. I think I would have decided to make a shovel."). Maybe the players wouldn't miss those decision opportunities too much if the outcomes were always optimal... but if the outcomes were always optimal, they'd never make decisions in advance!

Ron, From reading David's post, it seems to me the problem is that the players cared about the effects of the scene, about what direction it could steer the game, but didn't care for the scene itself. I think they wanted to be done with the scene quickly, but didn't speed forward because they wanted to make sure the results of the scene were to their liking. Also, it seems that, to further complicate things, while they didn't care for that scene per se.

David, if that is correct, I think that you really should skip forward in these cases. If every player agrees the current situation is not what they want (at least right now), I think that maybe you could all agree to solve the situation in some manner. Sure, there may be consequences down the road, but it probably won't be anything earth shattering, anything that will change the game too much (because if it is, and the players don't care for it right now, then it probably isn't a good day to play that game). What do you think?

Alex,
I think you're describing it accurately.  There was a tension between caring about the outcome but not enjoying the process.  "We want to skip ahead!  We're just not sure how to establish the outcome in a way that works for the game overall."

Ron,
Thanks for the focusing-in questions.  Regarding this particular session, I think I can best answer those with a play account:

The conversation with the wizard was actually extremely enjoyable.  I think it nonetheless contributed to a mounting frustration in the session, but I'll come back to that later if it seems important.

The rock-carving portion of the session is probably best recapped in approximated quotes:

Dan: "Okay, finally, we're done stashing our stuff, we've fetched our intern, and now we can head to Delsiford to deal with the smuggler."

John: "Well, while we're up north, we should take care of the rock."

Dan: "Oh, crap, right, the rock."

John: "We don't want someone to steal it or something."

Dave: "Dude, it's really heavy."

John: "Well, if we can carve it, maybe someone else could too."

Dave: "Anything's possible."

Merlin: "Well, we are in the neighborhood.  It'd be stupid to travel three weeks here and back later."

Dan: "Okay, let's do this quickly."

Everyone else: "Yes.  Let's."

Dave: "Okay, you're there.  The rock has grown a bit, but not much.  You wait until the moon's shining down?"

John: "Yeah.  The I poke at the rock."

Dave: "Just where the moonlight strikes it most directly, it's slightly soft."

Merlin: "Let's try to focus the moonlight with the crystal rods."

Dave: "Oh, neat.  Okay.  Yeah, it melts away from the little beam you create."

Dan: "Okay, let's get all of our rods out and work as a team to carve stuff."

Dave: "Hmm.  How's this gonna work?  You can't get under it..."

John: "We'll hack off chunks and then whittle them."

Dave: "Oh, yeah, okay, cool."

Merlin: "So what should we make?"

John: "Unbreakable swords!"

Dave: "Just the blade, or whole weapon in one piece?"

John: "Whole weapon!"

Merlin: "That might cause weighting and balance issues."

Dave: "Oh yeah.  It would."

John: "Okay, just the blade, then."

Dave: "Cool.  Just FYI, this stuff is heavier than steel, so it'll be unwieldy."

John: "If it's unbreakable, we can just make it paper thin!"

Merlin: "Paper thin unbreakable stuff?  We should make armor plates out of that."

[Here John and Merlin begin discussing how to achieve the optimal blend of protection and flexibility.  Occasionally, I can't visualize what they're talking about, and ask for clarification.]

Dan: "Jesus christ, this is taking forever."

John: "I'm trying to go fast!  But this is important!  We need to figure out what we do here!"

Dan: "I know.  Okay, look, I have to go home soon anyway.  There's no way we'll get through this and then still have time to attack the smugglers.  So let's break for tonight and deal with this next time, or over email or something."

Everyone else: "Sounds good."

This account may seem like a weird special case, but the general feeling of "want to skip ahead but can't" has cropped up at other times in play.  I'll try to pull up more examples if it becomes necessary.

Thanks,
-David

Flashbacks.

Currently your method for maintaining interest is to have game time and real world time have a stretchy correspondence, one passes faster than another at different times. That might not be enough; sometimes as you observe, something must be settled, but doing it right now is a chore. To keep the rhythm of a game fun for the players, even while the characters interests would require them to knuckle down and resolve the problem, means that you have to disconnect player time and character time more substantially.

Now in this specific case, choosing a flashback has mechanical significance; to maintain consistency, the team cannot have the swords/armour ready by the time they go to fight the smuggler, or if they have them it mustn't be relevant, which could be seriously annoying if you have to retcon in loads of excuses why they didn't.

For example, say you skipped ahead at the discovery the rock could be carved, then the idea of moon-carved swords or armour wouldn't have been introduced yet, so you'd have to give a reason why either were kept secret. If you skipped at the point of the sword, then you'd have to avoid talking about them much, and give an excuse for the moon-carved armour not being used etc.

But in other situations, it's totally fine to come back to something like that after the action has reached an apex. They are disconnected enough that it makes no difference.

Hi David,

What rule you need is an 'ignore John' rule. ;)

Or more to the point, for some reason they are following his leadership even though it's not fun for them to do so?

Also he's painting the idea it could get stolen, or carved by someone else...he's inventing fears to continue this.

Then Merlins backing him up.

I mean, maybe John likes this and perhaps Merlin too. But probably because of the cutural roleplay habit of 'neva split da party!' everyone stays on the same thing.

So
1. potentially part of the group is enjoying it and the other part isn't.

Also
2. I'd argue against the 'speed through it' idea...speed through something you don't like doing? Why not just stop?

Why can't you/they just walk away? Even if the rocks stolen or carved - ha, who cares! More gristle for future events!

No, there seems to be a strong focus on getting a conclusion - like reading a book right to the last page, even if your bored with it half way through. Even in Ron's and Alex's comments

What I'm saying in Big Model at-the-Techniques terms, is that successful play of all kinds may only proceed when people understand when a given scene has provided the limits of what it can provide

I think that maybe you could all agree to solve the situation in some manner.

Callan wrote:
Or more to the point, for some reason they are following his leadership even though it's not fun for them to do so?

Callan wrote:
Split da party! And if John starts telling them they need to stay to carve the rock, despite the fact that in real life that bores almost everyone else...well, it depends if he acts hurt/acts as if his fun is spoilt if they don't, when at the same time he's ignoring if they are having their fun spoilt by sticking around the rock.

In which case John is a disruptive player...correction - this goes outside the games SC. John is a disruptive person...subtley, but disruptive none the less. Or atleast what I'd call disruptive.

But if his character whinges but as a player he supports other people making their own choices and leaving for other stuff, then cool - play on!

Josh, I don't think you've read my post properly and if so, coincidentally, that's disrupting conversation a bit. I've refered to a guy who acts up and demands changes in behaviour if his fun is spoiled, but if someone elses fun gets spoiled he doesn't care. A kind of prima donna. And no you can't work with this guy or find ways - he doesn't care. That's precisely why he's disruptive - because he wont be working with you.

That's one alternative, and hopefully it is not the case here and instead John is just very passionate about his stuff and the rest of the group are too used to going with the flow and staying with him (or there's some missplaced sense of never splitting the party).

Read me through again.

Callan,

Yeah, I'm tempted to blame John.  I agree that, at the point where his behavior is selfish and disruptive, social sanction is the logical recourse.  However, I feel like it's partly my fault for putting him in an awkward position, where he has to choose between (a) reaping the fruits of some activity his character would be more than willing to do, or (b) having fun right here, right now.

Your idea that John can carve stuff while Dan can go do something more exciting is interesting.  I think it's only actionable, though, if Dan can find excitement without danger.  If there's danger involved, it's nonsensical in game to go in without your party -- that's basically rolelaying suicidality.  I can't think of an in-game activity that consistently yields excitement without at least the apparent threat of danger -- conversation with hostile folks in cloaks, or exploration of a mysterious new place.  None of this is stuff that Dan's character would do alone.

The same problem arises if the players say, "Screw this task, we're not in the mood for it."  It's really hard to justify that in-character.  "We have a rare and precious resource we can milk for adventuring value... but, nah, let's go adventuring without doing that."  Dan is actually playing a pretty impulsive, impatient character, so that gets us closer, but there are limits.  "Impatient" remains ultimately subordinate to basic practicality.

I wonder if it's possible for the characters to all go explore a mysterious new place, and have Dan and Merlin focus their attention on that, while John finishes deciding what exactly they carved from the rock in the last scene?  This could last only until the first moment in the exploration scenario when it mattered what tools were on hand.  This seems like it might occasionally work, but not often, or for very long.

Maybe a solution is that there should always be a ticking clock of some sort?  At least one exciting thing on the map is always threatening to expire or worsen?  This would be all the in-fiction justification Dan would need to say, "We'll come back to the rock later; we need to save Watertown now!"  I have a fair amount of time-sensitive things going on in the game at most times, but I haven't made it a priority to make sure I always have one.

Josh,

Good idea about stopping with the unwrapped present, and then encouraging some between-session pondering.  Unfortunately, logistics render this unfeasible -- we only have so many hours in so many sessions per month, and we don't want to scrap an hour or two of play time because a good in-fiction stopping point arrives.  I imagine many (most?) play groups are in a similar situation.

Your mention of "surplus capability" touches on a key point.  Everyone is totally exited about rock-shaping when they are solving an extant problem.  The ability to create now what you need now, and come back later to create what you need then, is awesome when the fiction supports it.  Trust me, though, that the fiction doesn't always support it.  (Whether the example I've used in this thread is perfect or not.)  I'd love to establish some in-fiction process of getting your stuff when you need it, but with no clairsentience or teleportation or automobiles or phones, I can't think of one.  Paying peasants to do tasks works occasionally, but is far from all-purpose.

i think you need a cut scene.  There is montage and fast forward when the players want it, but as a GM you can say STOP, and cut scene in.  The players are stuck in the cut scene until they can find a way to solve the problem or they leave it of their own free will.  It simple but might work.  Also you could control the time of the cut scene.  If they discuss too long, you could figure the out of game discussion takes as long as the in game one does and that the group is running out of time.

Hi David,

I had thought 'the party sticks together' might apply here

Your idea that John can carve stuff while Dan can go do something more exciting is interesting.  I think it's only actionable, though, if Dan can find excitement without danger.  If there's danger involved, it's nonsensical in game to go in without your party -- that's basically rolelaying suicidality.

The same problem arises if the players say, "Screw this task, we're not in the mood for it."  It's really hard to justify that in-character.  "We have a rare and precious resource we can milk for adventuring value... but, nah, let's go adventuring without doing that."  Dan is actually playing a pretty impulsive, impatient character, so that gets us closer, but there are limits.  "Impatient" remains ultimately subordinate to basic practicality.

I agree that, at the point where his behavior is selfish and disruptive, social sanction is the logical recourse.

This could last only until the first moment in the exploration scenario when it mattered what tools were on hand.

Callan wrote:
I've refered to a guy who acts up and demands changes in behaviour if his fun is spoiled, but if someone elses fun gets spoiled he doesn't care. A kind of prima donna. And no you can't work with this guy or find ways - he doesn't care. That's precisely why he's disruptive - because he wont be working with you.

Josh and Callan,

I'd prefer to keep this thread focused on the specific issue which I outlined in my first post, in the context of the priorities I listed in my second post.  The last two posts have diverged from that (in my opinion), and I'd appreciate it if you could respond to each other elsewhere.

I will return soon to address what I can, I just wanted to get this request out there first.

Thanks,
-David

David, huh? Your first couple of posts try and solve a problem that isn't the real problem, as far as I can tell. I start getting down to the real roots of what's the problem AFAICT and importantly, I thought you were with me on that. Now you've snapped back on how to fast forward again, or something or other from your first post. To me, you've just regressed.

And yes, responding to Josh can take up too much space, I'm fully taking that on board. But of the prior two posts to yours, mine was addressed soley to you.

It's not some mistake of posters to diverge from an original post with an incorrect assumption. I would prefer you just say your not mistaken and are right about your original two posts than seem to be going with me, then suddenly call me off topic.

Callan,
I thought all your ideas were great ones to explore, but I think I've failed to get anywhere with them.  We didn't really diverge until your last post, so I'm sorry that my request to change focus came out of the blue.

The facts of "What would the characters do in this situation?" are something I won't compromise.  However, the coverage of such actions is more flexible ("How much play time gets spent on it?").  Perhaps that flexibility is insufficient to make Dan & John happy, and what I really need to do is avoid handing them situations with tons of decision-making and no drama or time-pressure.  I'm still hoping that another solution might be found, though...

Josh,
Those are all cool things that could come up in Delve.  A few of them already have!  But this sounds to me like an account of situations wherein the players can get what they want when they want it.  I'm not sure how to extrapolate from your ideas to cover when that's not the case.

Maybe giving the characters a safe place to stash stuff should be an early-on GM priority?  But that's not much help when you go on an adventure far away... which is something I don't want to rule out...

Yeah, I wish my friends could play late to get to a good end point!  Damn work schedules.

David wrote:
But this sounds to me like an account of situations wherein the players can get what they want when they want it.  I'm not sure how to extrapolate from your ideas to cover when that's not the case.

Josh,

The title of this thread covers the dial's problem area.  When there aren't meaningful decisions to be made, no one minds skipping ahead.  Resolving what was skipped over is usually a combo of (a) GM asserts whatever outcome he deems most likely and (b) GM rolls randomly among multiple plausible outcomes.

Identifying the class of problematic situations sounds like a good idea to me.  I'll try:

"Lots of leads to follow and questions to ask with no time pressure or danger" is a contender.  Sometimes, though, it can be sped through.  We've played through interrogating every possible source on the haunted castle when that was fun, and jumped ahead to, "So what did we learn?" when it wasn't.

Actually, that latter has gotten slow when I've said, "Tell me what you cover in the fast-forward, so I can tell you the results."  Then they start thinking of specific questions for specific people, etc.  Sometimes I'll offer, "Do you just spend however long it takes to talk to everyone you can reach?" but they'll say no when I describe what that would consist of and they deem it silly.

Maybe I could try leaving more gaps in the fictional data sequence?  Like, it's okay to not know what the characters were doing during "a week of info gathering"?  These thing always seem to matter later, though.  When you try to go incognito, then all of a sudden we need to know whether you went house to house earlier.

I think the problematic situation comes down to "many options, but each with consequences".  But that's also kind of the meat of the game -- that players follow their interests, self-initiate quests, and that what they do matters in the setting.  What I might need is just a way to help them choose in a quick and satisfying matter.

Hmm.  In the real world, how is this done?  What's the most efficient/enjoyable way for 3 or 4 people to form a plan of action?

Ways to help Dan and John agree when enough is enough would go a long way.  A quick reference for "cover your bases" might also help.

Some really interesting discussion here.

I'm with Ron, I think:

If you value your fun over the integrity of the fiction, you need a metagame solution, to step back for a second from the game and figure how to make it work.

I think I might have done something like:

"We all want to move on [the next event], right? So, let's skip ahead and then we can start next session as a flashback at the moon rock. This means we have to agree right now that whatever you decide to do with the rock, it won't be helpful to you in [the next event], which we'll play tonight. Cool?"

The next best thing would probably be to engineer some in-fiction excuse for moving on--for instance, why couldn't they take a chunk out of that rock and carry it with them, only to shape it later?

Paul,

Your solution might be perfect for some of the "we're not in the mood for this right now" moments.  Someone would simply propose the flashback and then the group would agree on whether or not "no impact on next activity" was plausible.  If it wasn't, though, we couldn't use it.  My hope is still to achieve fun without ever sacrificing the integrity of the fiction.

As GM advice, "make resources portable" might be one of the options toward "avoid situations of many decisions with no pressure"...

I didn't state it very clearly in the last post, but my brainwave was that with the dial, you imply that the game can handle every situation that will come up (and it's associated GM-player interactions) at 15 different detail levels. So you can pull back from that, and say, "actually we won't do coffee drinking in bullet time!" but in a way, it would be awesome if you could. :)

In terms of making the game work interactively at that the scene summary level, you probably need to set up the basic abstractions at that scale, like (((attack)->fight)->war), so that people can say, "ok I do this" and talk at the appropriate level of abstraction. At the moment the different speeds have cues as to what to ask for, and how to talk IC, but not how to describe your actions. I know I'm just restating the problem here, but hopefully that will help you know where to start.

Hopefully if you get something like that going, it will hopefully still feel like delve in the faster parts, but it will be more like the memories of a busy day; a feeling of the motion, and a few snatches of detail here and there.

The slowdown system makes a lot of sense to me, though obviously it has tactical implications: How we partition the possibility space decides the weighting of a certain type of outcome, you know, "do we win this way this way or this way, or do we lose? roll a d4". You can go further with weighted random switches, or you could specifically watch for that and just sticking duplicate states down. One rule I like is that when dealing with things in the general view, you just turn the situation specific tactics someone would have done into a random factor, so that we know they did something well or badly, just not what it was. It means they can state their strategy from a low detail scale, then roll for extra twists that tactics put into it.

I get a feeling your making things quite hard for yourself by doing that kind of transition though, because although from a system modelling point of view it's cute to automate players responses and your own moment to moment whims with randomisation, it means that you will be filling in a lot of the content that would normally be being created by the players. An alternative? How about you have players suggest what their character might have done when it becomes important, you suggest an alternative where they weren't so on the ball, and they roll to see if their character was lucky enough/had sufficient foresight to predict this situation. In other words unreliable prediction of the future becomes unreliable ability to retroactively use current information. It's a more general version of "your character would have known about this". It would mean that the moon-rock-carving would be spread throughout the later scenes, in lulls or when relevant. How much you could keep reusing a scene would probably need to be kept track of; as they fill up earlier scenes with extra details, the GM would have his priority being to insure that it could plausibly have happened then, pretty much like normal!

The requirement to state in general terms what your guys were up to would also limit this, and the short dialog when deciding it would provide an inspiration for actually coming up with flashback suggestions.

I reckon you won't have to systematise people's coming to agreement, providing the learning curve is smooth enough, and you make it so it's not all meat all the time!

Regarding the comments about John, I myself am unable to judge without hearing the tone of voice and feeling the dynamic of the room, whether or not his attitude is causing things to drag.

The problem as I see it is in the stone itself.  What I"m writing is not intended as a criticism of the GM in this case, but perhaps illustrating how the GM has laid the perfect trap to catch both the players and himself in a quandary.

The trap functions on various levels.  For one, the item is non-portable, so it must be dealt with WHERE IT IS.  The stone is an open-ended exercise in creativity:  It can be used in a potentially huge number of ways...an EXCESSIVELY huge number of ways.  There is the sense that using it incorrectly will be a waste of a terrific resource.  There is also a sense that failing to exploit the opportunity now may result in complete waste of the opportunity.  But there is also no single, pressing need for an item so as to present an obvious choice or a productive platform for party debate.

In effect, the GM has placed an item and said, "This treasure is worth between zero and one million gold pieces, depending upon how you use it.  And you need to use it now [because it can't be moved]."  This piques the Gamist instincts of the players, driven to perform as well as they possibly can and reap the greatest possible gain.  But the way is completely unclear.  The truth is, they don't actually need any one object that desperately.  But it's unthinkable to simply waste such an opportunity. 

They are also being faced with colliding views of physics.  This stone is mythic by nature, but the techniques being employed are physics-bound, (e.g. the discussion of making a whole sword out of stone).  If the world is mythic, a fantastic sword should be possible, made entirely of stone.  If the world is not mythic, the stone probably should not exist.  This stone is a collision point between imagination and fact which causes discomfort.

Solution:  1) Make a similar treasure but which is portable, so it becomes an "ace up the sleeve" of the party.  2) Make the location so secret that they have no fear of it being found and can return in the future, when they know what they want.  3)  Give the players a Wish to play with, instead of a physical object.  This stone is essentially an unformed wish, but because of its physical nature, they are almost certain to under-utilize its potential; they sense this and are unwilling to leave the stone, even though they'd rather be adventuring.

I might suggest this stone would be better used as a trap laid by a dragon to ensnare whole groups of adventurers at once, as they sit and fret about the potential uses, gradually losing track of their surroundings, eventually falling asleep there, whence they can be easily eaten.  The existence of the stone is reminiscent of the way Gandalf the Grey tricked some trolls into arguing amongst themselves until sunrise, whence they all turned to stone, in "The Hobbit".

Jeff

Dave,

I`m curious to hear your thoughts on one of the suggestions above:

How do you feel about mechanics that abstract decision-making on the part of the characters retroactively?

So, for instance, you might say, "let's skip over the interrogation bit, ok, guys?" But if it becomes important much later, you can make a roll based on the character's Interrogation skills or perceptiveness or something, "Well, did you figure out to ask him about the Moon Rock, or were you not smart enough to?" Likewise, various kinds of expertise-related skills might cover for various situations. It could be open to interpretation, too, if that works for your group--like: "John's character is always thinking about covering his back. Let's say he has a very high chance of having kept his eyes on the back door during the banquet in the earlier scene."

As far as fictional integrity goes, I think it's important to remember that during play we're already skipping over great swathes of activity that we just don't find playworthy or that we don't consider important enough to focus any play time upon. We're playing characters in a fiction, so we have that luxury. If that were not the case we'd be sitting through every bowel movement, every uneventful minute between point A and point B, and so on.

Plus we're dealing with a limited commodity; play time. So we usually skim through even more things that may or may not end up being important or relevant later on down the line. This creates gaps in the fiction that are usually of no consequence. But every so often those gaps are of importance. Short of playing through every minute of a character's life or making players give a vast amount of instruction and detail for the moments we do play out to account for future contingencies, it's almost a necessity to have some way of accounting for what the characters did during those gaps that aren't covered during play.

Most of the time the handling of such situations is completely informal. "You did what back at the stone? Okay, cool." But it doesn't sound like that is really going to sit well for you, Dave. I'm not sure there is an option that is going to fit well with your vision of fictional integrity.

Many games handle physical resources, such as money and food, with a general value or rating. Perhaps such a thing would work to measure the quantity or quality of the characters "gap time"  in Delve? Just a thought. It sounds like Paul is proposing the same sort of idea, but with existing character traits.

-Chris

Hi guys,

I want to reiterate here that the issue I need help with relates to meaningful decisions.  Delve skips over and/or summarizes crap that no one cares about just fine.

Also, lest the term "fictional integrity" lug any baggage along with it, let's just say that making decisions in character, using your character's knowledge, is important in Delve.  If your character can't wait till problems arise, then time travel back to prior decision points to make optimal decisions in anticipation of said problems, well, then, as a player, your retroactivity options are limited.

So, on to the latest round of ideas:

Best practices: enabling and making decisions

I agree completely with Jeff's assessment of the situation.  I am comfortable calling the rock an instance of Bad GMing.  The suggestion about the dragon's trap is right on.  So, how should Delve GMs avoid such situations?  I need some rules of thumb to go along with "don't beg many decisions with no time pressure".  Here's one stab:

the more options for a resource, the more important that it be spendable on demand

Portability, secret locations, and Wish magic all strike me as specific implementations of this principle.

To go with this effort on the GM's part, it might be useful to give the players an Adventuring Company's Best Practices guide, with wisdom like, "If you have one thing you're excited about doing, don't worry about probing other opportunities instead.  If time and choices not made close some opportunities, fear not; others will always arise."

When is a decision too meaningful to skip, and when isn't it?

Paul and Josh are probing how to establish stuff when the players are comfortable skipping over decisions they could have made.  Which isn't going to answer how to proceed when they're not comfortable, but hey, maybe we can find what determines comfort/discomfort and figure out how to expand the comfort zone.

Rendering my quandary inapplicable might be more doable than "solving" it, so I'll do my best.

There was one session of Delve that took place under odd circumstances.  John had to miss the session, but we knew he'd be back for the next one.  So, I teleported Dan and Merlin's characters off somewhere and gave them a mini adventure.  Dan and Merlin knew they had 4 hours to do this adventure and get teleported back home to reunite with John's character.  So, we did a fair amount of play in Summary mode.

From my journal:

Roll 1 Situation:
Having been given directions to the town of Theravia, Dan and Merlin headed there in search of a way to return home.

Roll 1 Objectives:
They told me, "We want to find this Nikolai Ibanescu guy and maybe learn a bit about him. Failing that, we want to talk to the prophet child. We also want to ask everyone we see whether they recognize the 6-circle design from the door that sent us here."

Roll 1:
I picked up Dan's d30, said to myself, "High is good; 20-30 finds Nikolai, 10-20 finds prophet, 0-9 finds nothing," and rolled a 24. Then I made a second roll for the unrelated goal of glyph info, just to make the players think there was some chance they might get it. There wasn't.

Roll 1 Narration:
I told them, "You learn Nikolai has recently returned from being away. He is not well-liked, and some believe him to be in league with the evil on the island. You get directions to his cabin. That's about it. No luck with the 6 circles." I then felt it would be proper to give them some sense of the color of their investigative experience, so I told them about swampy terrain, scarce fields, meager dwellings, and skinny, depressed villagers. A lot of my description was similar to what I would tell them in chunks as they approached and then entered the village.

This worked well for "keeping things moving" purposes, and the sacrifice in experience didn't matter because the PCs left the area. However, we all agreed that more color would have been needed if they'd stuck around.

Roll 2 Situation:
Having convinced Nikolai to come with them to the place they teleported into, the PCs wanted to pump him for info on the walk.

Roll 2 Objectives:
They wanted to know about his plans to fight Theravia's enemies, his affinity for dark powers, his knowledge of the teleporter, his familiarity with the Brotherhood, anything about Dakmour's creepy Nobility, and where he got his weird clothes. They also wanted to convince him that it was not okay for him to kill the guy they were about to meet.

I figured Nikolai would have objectives of his own, wanting to know about all the PCs' magical experiences, particularly those that led up to the teleportation. I asked the PCs what they'd willingly share, and they volunteered a long enough list that I judged it'd occupy the whole trip (they wisely specified a few things they wouldn't share too). If they'd been less generous, I would have had to pose some, "If you don't talk, neither does he," scenarios and maybe roll dice.

Roll 2:
I decided that Nikolai would happily talk honestly about the Nobility, his clothes, and his ignorance of the Brotherhood, so I didn't roll for those. I rolled a d10 each for the remaining 4 topics of interest, deciding that 10 was maximum candor and 1 was refusal. I didn't think about lying; I probably should have.

I rolled high for dark powers, low for teleporter, and middling for enemy plans and "don't kill" compliance.

Roll 2 Narration:
I just fed them info. Very little color beyond, "He brags about X," and, "He won't tell you Y because it's his bargaining chip." We were on the clock at that point, as I needed to end the session and get back to work.

Have you considered some kind of narrative override resource?  What I mean is, is there a way for players to push a skipped result after the fact.

Here's my thinking, the players want to do something else but they feel they need to resolve the current situation first.  It sounds like what you might want in that situation is way to put that scene on hold and get back to it later.  The problem there is that if the scene sets the direction of the later scenes skipping it can make starting the next scene harder.

What I'm suggesting is giving the player a way to establish a few key details and end the scene.  They're basically saying "Let's get back to this later.  Right now I want to go this way."  The idea is to give the players a limited resource that lets them create their own leads for getting out of these sticking points.

Hey there, I'm not sure how that differs from some of the earlier suggestions in this thread.  Care to elaborate?

A good solution to my quandary should be used whenever it can be used; no need to make it a limited resource.

As for establishing facts, remember, players can only do that via character actions!  I dunno if that shoots down your idea or not, because I'm not clear on what concrete applications you were envisioning.

The idea was to let the player's push for a desired follow up scene without needing to resolve the problem scene first.  This may very well involve establishing fact, even it it's just "we found a lead to this last scene".  You want that as a limited ability so a player doesn't just skip with impunity.  Another way of handling that would be with a unanimous vote.

It looks like your setting up restrictions that make this a very hard problem to solve.  Let me see if I've got this right.
1) For certain situations, the next scene will depend on the outcome of the current scene.
2) In some of those situations, the current scene is not something the players want to engage in at the moment.
3) The players have no way of getting an outcome without going through the steps in character.
Is that about right?  If so I have no idea how you intend to fix that without either decoupling the linkage in point 1 or adding some kind of shortcuts to point 3.

Yeah, sorry, although your idea sounds like it could be cool in another context, I don't think it's compatible with some of the foundations of Delve I've described.