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Pacing is tricky.

No matter what medium you’re working in — whether film, theater, prose, or roleplaying games — pacing is ephemeral, subjective, and devilishly difficult to get a grip on. Even absolute masters of pacing will struggle to teach it, and the few rules they offer seem to be more honored in the breach than the observance. Entire books about pacing in film have been written where the practical advice more or less boils down to, “Make the cut at the moment that feels right to you,” and, “Watch movies with really great pacing until you get a feel for it.”

How much more difficult is it, therefore, to teach (and learn!) effective pacing in a roleplaying game? A medium in which, even with the advent of actual play broadcasts, most of the artform is experienced only by those immediately participating?

Nevertheless, pacing is incredibly important. Even pedestrian material can be made compelling with effective pacing, and otherwise brilliant material can elicit glazed eyes and bored players if the pacing is plodding or unfocused.

So I’m going to do my best to give you some concrete, actionable advice for pacing your sessions.

Here are some basics of scene structure in RPGs that we need to understand before diving into pacing:

First, RPG sessions are made up of scenes.

Each scene is framed, introducing the location where the scene is taking place and the characters who are participating in it. (Characters may, of course, come and go as the scene continues. Some scenes will even change location, although a change of location more often suggests that a new scene is beginning.)

Each scene has an agenda, which is the reason we’re playing the scene. This can often be thought of in the form of a question that the scene is answering:

• Can the princess be wooed?
• Will Hou defeat Chaohui?
• Can the goblins convince the PCs to help them fight the dragon?
• Will Jack Hammer find the murder weapon?

If you can’t figure out what the agenda of the scene is (or if the answer is trivial or obvious), then it’s probably not worth playing it out and you should move onto the next interesting question and frame that scene.

When a scene is finished, the GM will either cut or transition to a new scene.

Broadly speaking, pacing can be understood as (a) the choice of when to end a scene, (b) the choice of how to start a new scene, and (c) the speed at which the scene plays out. Collectively, this also encompasses the speed at which the entire scenario and/or session plays out. (You may notice the emphasis on “speed.” That’s why we call it pacing. It’s all about controlling the speed of the narrative.)

THREE TIPS FOR THE BEGINNER

As a beginning GM, you’ve got a lot of balls to keep in the air. Pacing is one more ball that you need to figure out how to juggle, so I’ll give you a bonus tip before we even get started: You might want to leave the Pacing ball in the cupboard for a few sessions while you get a grip on everything else. To at least some extent, pacing will take care of itself, particularly if you’re starting with location-crawls (as I recommend in Prep Tips for the Beginning DM) and it can make a lot of sense to focus on just the essential balls (like making rulings) rather than trying to master everything at once and dropping all the balls on the floor.

When you’re feeling confident, though, here are three practical pacing tips to get your started.

If the scene is about achieving a logistical goal (e.g., interrogate a prisoner until they give you the information), cut to the next scene within one minute of the logistical goal being achieved. (Often you can cut immediately on the goal being achieved, but a little denouement/cooldown is often a good idea.)

Advanced Tip: If the PCs have a logistical goal whose achievement may not be immediately obvious (e.g., searching for clues or an interrogation; have we gotten all the information? or could we learn more?) hold up a sign that says WRAP SCENE on it. (You’ll want to explain this to the players ahead of time.) This gives players “permission” to exit the scene, while also giving them the space to wrap up any loose roleplaying ends they’re interested in.

If it’s a roleplaying scene, cut on the second lull. The first lull in the scene — that moment when the players seem a little uncertain about what they should be doing or saying — is often a pivot: The players have learned what the scene is about and the “uncertainty” is actually them figuring out what they want to do about it. Once they find that new direction, the scene will start chugging again and will often drive forward to a clear and satisfying conclusion.

If you hit a second lull, however, that’s a good sign that the scene’s function is done. Or, at the very least, that the question asked by the agenda cannot be answered this time (e.g., the princess is neither wooed nor unwooed, but no further progress on the wooing will be happening at this time).

If it’s a combat scene, your overriding goal is to resolve the fight faster. No, faster than that. Even faster. Faster. Faster … Okay, that’s not bad.

A few core techniques you can use to achieve this:

• Write down initiative (or whatever other form of clear recordkeeping your initiative system requires, like using a shot counter in Feng Shui). “Anybody going on 17? 16? What about 15?” is absolute death for pacing in combat.
• Put the players on deck. “The goblins are going and then it’ll be your turn, Rob.” Giving players the heads up that their turn is next helps keep them focused and speeds up both perceived and actual waiting times in combat — the former because they’re getting reengaged before their turn; the latter because you actually will be cycling through the initiative order faster.
• Get ahead on resolution by multitasking. Are you waiting for the PC fighter to roll their attack roll and damage? Roll the goblins’ attack dice so that they’ll be waiting when the goblins go next.
• Roll fistfuls of dice. Roll all the goblins’ attacks at the same time and/or roll attack & damage at the same time. If you can get the players doing the same thing, even better! (Check out Random GM Tip: Fistfuls of Dice for more details on this technique.)

As I said, the most important thing here is to keep combat moving as fast as possible. The quicker you cycle through each round of combat, the less time each individual player will be waiting to take their next action. Get it fast enough and the benefits will compound (as the players remain more engaged and can, therefore, resolve their actions faster, resulting in combat going even faster). But the reverse is also true: If combat is too slow, players will disengage, take longer to resolve their actions, and combat will slow down even more.

Advanced Tip: Roll initiative last. Instead of rolling initiative at the beginning of combat, have everyone roll their initiative at the end of the fight and then use those initiative scores for the next combat. That way, when the new fight starts, you can launch directly into it at full speed, instead of pausing to generate, record, and then sort initiative values. (You will, of course, need to anticipate upcoming combats and get your NPCs’ initiative scores recorded while, for example, the PCs are still walking down the hallway towards them.)

FOR THE INTERMEDIATE GM

You’ll have noticed that all of these tips are strictly about speeding things up: Shorter scenes. Faster scene transitions. Quicker combat resolution.

Speed is not, of course, the be-all and end-all of pacing. Quite the opposite: Sometimes you want a slow scene. Sometimes you want to build tension (and release it!). Sometimes you need to find the quiet moments. Sometimes the players need a breather.

But, as a beginning GM, the biggest and most effective improvement you can make to your pacing is to just get all the drag and dead air out of your sessions. So just focus on that for right now!

Once you’ve got everything tightened up and your sessions are humming along like a well-oiled machine, you’ll also be in a much better position to start thinking about where letting things relax is the right choice (and why). To put it another way: A slow-paced scene is only meaningful if (a) it’s a deliberate choice and (b) it stands in contrast to the other scenes in your game.

When you’re ready to take that next step, check out The Art of Pacing.

FURTHER READING

Prep Tips for the Beginning DM
Prep Tips for the Beginning GM: Cyberpunk
Failure for the Beginning GM
The Art of Pacing

WRITTEN BY
Bill Heron & Justin Alexander

This is the book that lead to me becoming the co-creator of the Infinity roleplaying game. And now, by a very long and very strange road, you can finally add it your own collection!

Back in 2015 I was shopping around for a publisher who would let me develop and publish a node-based campaign. I eventually reached out to Modiphius, spoke with Chris Birch (who owns the company), and was assigned to the Mutant Chronicles RPG. I started reading the existing material for Mutant Chronicles, but a few weeks later, Chris reached out and said, “Actually, we’ve got this new RPG we’re developing called Infinity, based on Corvus Belli’s tabletop miniatures game. We need a really cool campaign for it, would you like to work on that instead?”

When I took a peek at the Infinity universe, I loved what I saw, so I jumped at the opportunity.

Over the next couple months I started developing the material for, first, Acheron Cascade and also a second campaign. I’m not entirely clear on the sequence of events here, but by the summer of 2015 Infinity no longer has a Lead Developer. At Gen Con that year, I had a few meetings with Chris Birch and others about the campaigns I was working and these evolved into a broader discussion of how I thought the Infinity product line should be organized.

If I recall correctly, on Sunday, as I was packing up my suitcase to head home, I got a call from Chris offering me the job as Infinity‘s new Lead Developer. Which was simply amazing.

Within days we were launching a Kickstarter that was revamped to match the blueprint for the product line I’d proposed, and we went on to have the largest Kickstarter ever for a first edition RPG. (This record has since been blown out of the water multiple times over.)

But now that I was focused on developing the core game, Acheron Cascade needed to be laid aside for a bit.

It got laid aside for a long time.

I eventually left Modiphius, in part because I really wanted to focus on my campaign. I spent a few months fleshing out the first few adventures and beginning to playtest them, but, ironically, I wasn’t able to finish the campaign because a few months later I was hired by Atlas Games to become their RPG Developer.

Benn Graybeaton, who had taken over for me as the Line Developer for Infinity, brought in Bill Heron. I was able to pass my development notes and playtest drafts over to him, and he managed to somehow turn them into a finished book. Bill’s a hero and I’m so grateful to him for using what I’d begun and bringing a book that I thought I would never see to life.

Hope you enjoy it!

INFINITY – ACHERON CASCADE
Modiphius Entertainment – 2022
(Co-Author)
Print Edition – PDF Edition

Go to Part 1

NODE 8: MINNEAPOLIS FEDERAL RESERVE

(502 Marquette Ave., Minneapolis, MN)

BACKGROUND:

• 1913: Federal Reserve Act signed by Woodrow Wilson.
• 1914: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis incorporated May 18^th, directors elected over the summer.
• October 1914: John H. Rich is appointed the first Minneapolis Federal Reserve Agent.
• January 1915: Offices established at New York Life Building (2^nd Ave. South & 5^th Street). Vault space for cash rented from nearby banks.
• 1921: Federal Reserve had outgrown its current offices. Site purchased at 5^th Street  & Marquette. Excavation of the site begins by the end of the year.
• During construction of the new building. John H. Rich dies and is replaced by John Barca. By this time, all nine directors of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve are Tanit cultists.
• Designed by Cass Gilbert to feature classical architecture, the new building was also designed to include a secret Tophet sanctuary beneath the vault in which child sacrifices could be used to create tophet serum.
• 1923: Cornerstone of the new Federal Reserve Building is laid. (The cornerstone contains a Tanit reliquary, part of a series of ceremonies which sanctify the building as a holy site.)
• 1924: Primary construction is completed. John Barca and the cultists begin using the Tophet sanctuary create Tanit serum. Officially, the board of directors and various other officers (all cultists) begun using the offices.
• February 1^st, 1925: Historically, the new Federal Reserve Building is occupied. The New York Life Building offices are shut down and vault deposits are centralized in the new building’s state-of-the-art vault.

WHAT THE FED OFFICIALLY DOES

• Economists: Collect and analyze data from across the Midwest to help the federal government monitor the economy and set interest rates.
• Cash Reserve: The Federal Reserve Bank is a bank for banks. When the banks need bank notes or coin, they request them from the Federal Reserve. That cash reserve (consisting of millions of U.S. dollars and other currency instruments) are stored in the Fed’s vaults.

INFILTRATION

Make an Appointment: Whether with John Barca or another member of the Fed staff. Although these are all cultists, official business is being conducted as a cover for their activities.

Charity Event: Dolls for Family Welfare is a charity which, as the name suggests, involves selling dolls to raise funds for charity. On Saturdays through the end of the year, they set up in the lobby of the building, also offering people the opportunity to do a short tour. The small crowds and/or tours offer the opportunity to perhaps slip away into the deeper recesses of the building. (Prop: Dolls for Family Welfare)

Fake Delivery: There are frequent deliveries to the building. These include periodicals and other material for the Archives (which are currently in the process of being transferred from the New York Life Building) and also construction material for the crews still working on finishing the interior features and décor.

Breaking In: If the vault were operational (and full of cash), this would be virtually impossible due to the extreme security measures that would be in place. Fortunately, this is not the case and only a minimal security team is onsite (see below).

Search Warrant & Police Raid: The PCs are working with Fred Watson, so it’s quite plausible that they’ll go to the police with the evidence they have. If they do so, make sure the PCs get an invite to be on the team serving the search warrants and expect a bloody shoot out between cops and cultists. (Fred taking a bullet seems dramatically awesome.) Alternatively, if you want to keep the ball in the PCs’ court, then “jurisdictional issues” can be invoked between the federal government and local law enforcement that will delay the law enforcement response by days or possibly even weeks.

NEW YORK LIFE BUILDING

Core Clue: John Barca spends little or no time at the old offices, conducting all of his business out of the offices in the new Federal Reserve Building. (Basically any investigation into the Fed’s activities at the New York Life Building should lead to some variation of, “This is all just business as usual… but the new building is weird / upper management is being very secretive about it / I keep trying to get transferred over there and apparently only people on a special list are allowed / etc.”)

New York Life Building:10-storey building with lower stories of St. Cloud granite and the upper stories of pressed brick. Built in 1890.

• Lobby: The lobby is simply incredible, featuring a pair of floating, double-helix staircases.
• Federal Reserve first rented offices in 1915. They currently occupy two floors.
• Building contains 250 offices.
• Other tenants include: The National Mutual Life Association, Walter L. Badger Real Estate and Loans, the Tontine Savings Association, Hennepin Commission Co. (a grain and stock company), the Gale Agency (representing various stock companies), and multiple attorneys (including Cross, Hicks, Carleton, & Cross; Weed Munro, Geo. Harold Smith; Edward C. Gale & Walter C. Tiffany; Alvord C. Egelston & George H. White; Booth & Douglas).

RESEARCH

History: Easily pull up the public history of the Federal Reserve and, specifically, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve as described above.

Art History – Newspaper Morgues: Local reporting features photographs of art being moved into the new Federal Reserve Building. Art History indicates that this includes rare examples of Carthaginian sculpture.

Bureaucracy: Obtain copies of the architectural plans for the new Federal Reserve Building.

• Architecture: It appears that an unusual steel alloy was used in the construction of the building; reputedly for tensile strength, although it’s unclear why that would be necessary. (Sourcing this alchemically infused steel could lead to another Tanit cultist operation at your discretion.)
• Architecture: Studying the public plans makes it’s clear that there’s something missing from them — a void directly underneath the Vault for which there are structural supports, but no indication of what’s actually there.
• Architecture 1: There’s also something weird about one of the elevator shafts. It’s designed for a greater height of operation than the other shafts, but there’s no visible reason for it.
• GM Note: Copies of the full, uncensored plans can be found in Barca’s office. At your discretion, copies might also be on file with the construction company (or, alternatively, they’ve been mysteriously destroyed). Cass Gilbert, the architect, would almost certainly have kept personal copies, but he now lives (and keeps his offices) in New York City.

Oral History / Intimidation – Construction Company: Talking to workers can probably shake free whispers about a “secret” area of the site that only certain workers were allowed into.

• Those workers (who were actually Tanit cultists) have all left the company and vanished. The person responsible for hiring them, Carl Mason, left the construction company and, strangely, now works as an economic analyst for the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.

The Cass Gilbert Rabbit Hole: Pursuing Cass Gilbert, the architect who designed the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, on the assumption that he must be part of the conspiracy can turn into a huge rabbit hole. For example:

• He designed the Minnesota Capitol Building (completed in 1905).
• He designed the Woolworth Building in New York City (currently the tallest building in the world). And does that mean that F.W. Woolworth, the founder of the F.W. Woolworth Company, is a Tanit cultist? Are his nationwide five-and-dime stores acting as operational centers for cult cells?
• He is currently designing the U.S. Supreme Court Building (which will be completed in 1935). If they’ve infiltrated the Federal Reserve, how deep has the cult penetrated the U.S. government?
• Where is he now? On a trip to England with his family, where he’s to be granted an audience with the British Royal Family. Can the PCs stop the British Empire from being suborned?

Or, alternatively, this really is just a rabbit hole: Cass Gilbert was just hired to do a job, modifying the building to include the sub-vault space at the instruction of John Barca after the death of John H. Rich. (You could even have him conveniently visiting family in Minnesota — he was raised here — and available for questioning, revealing Barca as the source for the sub-vault modifications.)

IN THE AREA

Streetcars: Streetcar lines run on all sides of the Federal Reserve Building.

Coleman’s Greasing Station: Located directly behind the Federal Reserve Building. (It’s like a service station / gas station.)

Syndicate Building: Built by a syndicate (thus the name) in 1883, the Syndicate Building contains a quarter-million feet of retail space. Assume the investigators can buy almost anything they want here.

Go to Node 8B: Inside the Minneapolis Federal Reserve