Timing: It's All About the Rhythm

Timing a dungeon is a double-edged sword.

Members of my tabletop gaming group have been recently inspired to try their hand at sitting behind the screen, drawing graph paper maps, and planning traps (that rhymed a bit). They’re getting in way over their heads and I couldn’t be more proud. But, like all new Dungeon Masters who want their first dungeon to be a homebrew one, they are confused about how to time things and make certain it all runs smoothly.

I’ll be getting to my tips and tricks for running a well timed dungeon down below but first I want to explain my philosophy when it comes to this sort of issue. If you sit and plan the exact number of minutes your party should spend in each room then you leave no wiggle-room for tavern shenanigans or long roleplay arguments. If you don’t plan time for a room at all then you’re likely going to end earlier than you intended or feel obligated to draw out some encounters to artificially stretch the encounter.

My first gaming group had a very strict schedule for when we could play. Four hours each Friday. This was largely due to a single party member’s schedule but he was amusing so we worked around it for him. I say amusing because this is the character who regularly fell unconscious at least twice a session and managed to “bluff” his severed hand back onto his wrist in a moment of miraculous dice intervention. Needless to say he was an odd squid but a funny one.

I had to plan each and every one of my first dozen sessions into a four hour time block and since I hated erasing maps I planned each map within the confines of our wet erase board. Back then I like to railroad my party. I was young and foolish. Because of this I allowed for very little shenanigans. The only time they spent in a tavern was time I allotted to them. Their roleplaying was largely in response to traps or monsters or boss fights. In hindsight it wasn’t perfect but we got a lot of amusing stories out of a dozen 4 hour sessions.

It was also remarkably stressful having to work within that timeframe. Even having an extra hour would have reduced my headaches and night terrors. Lately I plan for roughly six hour sessions with one of those hours being dedicated roleplaying time in a tavern or ship cabin or brothel or whatever. My party’s weird, guys.

Tips and tricks for timing:

• A large room is ten minutes. A small room is five. Ignoring monsters and traps, rooms are largely uninteresting. If there’s nothing to fight or avoid then the party will be in and out as soon as they find the hidden loot.
• A room suspected of having a trap is fifteen minutes at least. If your party is like my party then they are terrified of you. Treasure is always going to hurt them. A simple hallway is not a simple hallway. Chests will bite their hands off. Columns mean ambush. Bookshelves mean jumping spiders. Some days I feel like I’ve contributed to my players’ nightmares in all the right ways. Anyway, a party that suspects a trap will take their time. Fifteen minutes is the shortest amount of time they’ll give you to get through a room with suspected traps.
• A monster encounter is at least a half an hour. Even if you think your party can kill a creature quickly remember that the dice hate a proud DM and will punish you for your hubris. An encounter that scales with the party’s level should have a half an hour planned time for its completion. This includes prep time for the fight if they intend to ambush the creatures, a rest afterward while they figure out what to do next, and of course looting time.
• A bad boss fight is fifteen minutes. A good boss fight is a half hour. I’m not great at boss fights. I always underestimate the party’s power and then they get these incredible dice rolls that curb stomp the two hydras I have for them so my boss fights end very quickly. Good boss fights involve multiple phases, ramping difficulty, and maybe terrain manipulation or interesting environments. I’ve been in maybe two interesting boss fights in my time as a player. Unless your boss can rock a mad soliloquy a half an hour should be fine.
• Be willing to adjust on the fly. If your players are bored with an encounter or bored with a trap or too frustrated by a puzzle then adjust. Either you need to adjust the difficulty of the encounter or trap to bring it to a close or your need to reevaluate how much time you’re giving them to solve a riddle. Make future encounters shorter or longer (not easier or harder, those are different entirely). Remove sections from your dungeon (I will be writing an article all about this at a later date). Edit the phases of your boss fight. Until your players know what’s going on the dungeon is still a mystery that you are running.
• For roleplay centered sessions assume that you are going to go well over your time limit. It’s nearly impossible to plan time limits for a roleplay heavy session. Who knows what the players are going to latch onto and enjoy. For these I usually plan far too many things and the players ignore about half of them, which is fine. I gave them opportunities to interact and they chose the ones they thought were interesting. Giving your players choices is more important than offering them a choice of railroad tracks.

What’s my one rule? Timing a dungeon is a double-edged sword.