Timekeeping During Investigations
Timekeeping during a short investigation can be easy, such as Dead Light which takes place over the course of a single night. But for longer, multi-day investigations, keeping a good timeline can help keep the players engaged and feeling like time is a finite resource, to be spent wisely. Recently I ran "Ladybug, Ladybug Fly Away Home" from "The Things We Leave Behind" using a timekeeping system I stole wholesale from Mythos Tales (a fun boardgame if you haven't checked it out yet).
Basically, each day has 3 investigative time slots: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. Each time slot can be used for a single significant investigative activity: interviewing witnesses, performing research, etc. Incidental activities like meals, sleep, and driving time (unless 4+ hours at a time) are folded into this timeline. This allows a transition from keeping strict time records (and arguments about how long everything takes, the need for meal and bathroom breaks, etc.) or handwaving time (in which there's no sense of urgency, as players have unlimited time to prepare). Once players have a sense that their time is limited, they treat it like a valuable resource and prioritize how much time to spend on any activity, or whether they should forego some investigative opportunity to pursue something more likely to bear fruit, since they don't have time to do both. It also allows a reasonable solution for players who want to reroll skills checks for research by continuing to look - sure you can reroll Library Use, you just spend another time slot doing that and not something else.
Of course, time needs to actually be a finite resource if this is to be meaningful. As part of prep, I found this timekeeping system useful for plotting what various NPCs may be doing absent intervention from the players (on Friday night, if the cult hasn't reacquired the sacrifice, they will start to implement Plan B in preparation for the Tuesday ritual). It makes it easier to "wing it" when things don't go according to plan - if the PCs force the villain to accelerate his plans, you might reasonably determine that the villain is less prepared than he might otherwise have been, rewarding the players for their success. Also, as events start to transpire based on the timeline rather than direct PC intervention, they will get the impression that they are racing against time, and delays may result in being too late to save the day.
I had great success with this running a week-long investigation; I imagine it would be of even greater use in a longer campaign like Masks of Nyarlathotep.
TL;DR: Stole a timekeeping system from a boardgame for CoC, worked pretty well for longer investigations.
Posted Dec 7, 2017, 11:09 PM UTC
I usually just try to work it out in my head as I DM. Like okay you made that car journey it took four hours and it's now 5pm. Things like library research and so on can be skill checked every hour and so on. Something more structured might be fun to try out, but I think it might make it feel more 'gamey'.
How long do your sessions normally cover? I found that keeping track in my head works when doing one evening event but if the investigation is supposed to take a few days/weeks it quickly becomes hard to track that time.
It can feel a little gamey in play, but I can't keep track of the schedule that well in my head and I don't know how long it takes to traverse various cities, so I just handwave things like travel and lump that stuff into one activity. I don't know about you, but I have made trips to the library where I was looking for one book and it took 20min and another trip still looking for a book that took 3hrs..... which is how I justify an activity taking ~4hrs regardless
The other important thing to remember, you are still the keeper and this isn't a hard and fast rule, so if you think what they did didn't take a lot of time, of course you can let them do more things.
Yeah, I get that. My sessions are usually resolved within two days at most, and so I can only imagine it becoming more complicated after several days or a week. I'm definitely going to try it out and see if it makes things smoother, but I might keep the rule to myself and use it as a guideline rather than let my players know about it openly. I basically try to avoid discussing anything functional or rules-related unless I reeeeally have to.
Yeah, I get keeping the rules secret. I actually introduced the rule to my players when they were stuck on a boat for a week and it had scheduled activities, that were basically Morning, Afternoon, Night and it developed from that into something that we did all the time.
I ran Amidst the Ancient Trees (from the 7e rules) without a timeline (though I did figure out how far apart things were in travel time), and I'm currently running my group through Ties That Bind (from Doors to Darkness) with a timeline and it makes a big difference. Especially when, like my group, they take more than one session to get through the story.
Personally, I work how how long it takes to travel between important locations, and at least a rough timeline of the adversary's/NPC's plans and things that are brought to the attention of the Players. I get more granular, and track by the hour, but still do things like 2hours per Library Use or Computer check (though I shortened the library trip to an hour when one of the players rolled an 01 as his first roll on finding the book they needed and they had the help that would get them the book faster than normal).
Regardless, the benefit is to list out when things happen before hand, so you as the Keeper only have to "know what time it is" and add notes on things that change due to player intervention. It definitely makes tracking things, and giving the players a sense of time passing then by, much easier to do.
It is a little gamey, which is part of the reason I liked it. My usual group basically has 2 categories - veteran players (and power-gamers) who will dominate the table if you let them, and n00bs/casual gamers who may hesitate to participate if not given a chance. In using this timekeeping method, I found it to be a little like combat in that everyone at the table gets a turn, everyone gets their chance at the spotlight, everyone gets an opportunity to participate without worrying that someone else at the table will monopolize the GMs attention.