Delay: The encounter retards the party’s progress and consumes their time without offering any real dangers or rewards. Anything that can grab the party’s attention and hold it for a time can make an effective delay, even an empty room in a castle or dungeon complex. Delays might seem like a general waste of time and a source of player frustration at first glance, and that is just what they are when they’re overused. However, they can be very effective if used sparingly and thoughtfully.

Delays are very useful for controlling magic in the campaign; they eat up game time and exhaust the durations of nonpermanent magical effects the party might be using. To keep players from becoming bored, it is best to introduce delays that consume lots of game time, but very little real time. For example, searching a 10’ x 10’ section of wall for a secret door requires a full turn (10 minutes) of game time; most other searches and close inspections proceed at similar rates. However, it only takes a few seconds of playing time to resolve the search.

Delays also are useful for keeping players on their toes. If everything the party encounters is valuable, dangerous, or significant to the plot, the players don’t have to give much thought to their actions—going over everything they find with a fine-toothed comb is the prudent thing to do. If, however, most intriguing things the party finds turn out to be nothing special, the players quickly learn to use some judgment about how they use their game time.

Delays also serve to vary an adventure’s pace. A few innocuous breaks in the action give players and their characters time to relax a bit. These pauses also tend to encourage role-playing by giving players opportunities to explore aspects of their characters that are not directly linked to success or survival. Even the most ardent mineral collector, for example, isn’t going to be terribly interested in the surrounding rocks if an army of 1,000 orcs is descending on his location.

Table of Contents