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Tips and Tools for Timing Sessions

by Mike on 22 December 2025

If you're running an ongoing campaign, timing within a session may not be critical. Whatever you didn't get to in one session you'll get to in the next. But if you have a certain amount of material you want to get through in a certain amount of time – whether at a home game or a convention game – timing can matter a lot. Here are some tips to manage timing during your game.

Timing Versus Pacing

First, let's separate timing from pacing. Pacing describes the feeling and movement of the adventure – keeping characters and players engaged in the story without making things so frantic that the game feels overwhelming. Tools like Upward and Downward Beats help manage pacing.

Timing describes what material you're able to get through in what amount of real-world time. Timing and pacing are related but not the same thing. Tools to help manage timing can also improve pacing and sometimes managing pacing also improves timing, but they're really two separate things we can focus on individually.

45 Minutes Per Scene

As a rough measure, assume any reasonable scene is going to take 45 minutes of game time. Some scenes take less time, some take more, but having a rough estimate of one scene every 45 minutes helps you gauge how much material you need to prep and how much material you can expect to get through.

Moving MacGuffins

MacGuffins, the central (often physical) key to any given quest the characters undertake, don't always need to be in the same spot. To manage timing, prepare your adventures so you can move MacGuffins forward so characters can get them earlier or push them back to better fill in the time you have. Movable MacGuffins give you a good dial to turn to manage the timing of your game.

Use Real-World Timers

Use a stopwatch or alarm on your phone to manage time. It's easy to get lost in flow when running your game – we're so focused on the game that we lose track of time. Set your timer every 45 minutes to keep track of the time and measure how fast or slow you're getting through the material you need to run. During prep, consider how far you think you need to be at given points in the game and recognize the scenes you need to get through and the ones you can cut to speed things up if you need.

Shadowdark's one-hour torch timer is a fantastic out-of-world way to keep track of the timing of your game with a clear in-world component to keep pacing high.

Optional Material

Prepare a chunk of your session with optional scenes you can drop in or cut out given the timing of your actual session. These scenes shouldn't just be filler – they should still matter to the game if you run them – but they shouldn't be critical to the game.

Run with Fewer Players

The more players you have, the harder it is to manage pacing. Six players can eat a lot of spotlight time and the variance of timing increases since some players might be quiet or move quickly or take up more time than others. Four players makes it much easier to manage the timing of your session.

Movable Boss Battles

In my yearly Shadowdark Ravenloft game, I set a real-world timer for 45 minutes before the end of the session. That's when Strahd shows up and starts chewing on the characters regardless of where they are in the castle. I did the same thing in my Shadowdark adventure, Crypts of Karigulon, available to Hero-tier patrons of Sly Flourish and wrote about how to do it in the Shadowdark Quick Start adventure Lost Citadel of the Scarlet Minotaur.

Movable boss battles don't fit every time-sensitive session but it's a good trick if you can pull it off. Likewise, if you keep your map design flexible, you can move the entire boss room closer to the characters if time is tight. This prevents you from cutting off the climax of the session while spending a lot of time on the "boring middle".

Speaking of...

Cut the Boring Middle

Whether preparing your homebrew adventure or running a published adventure, be ready to cut from the boring middle. Look at the scenes taking up time between the intro and conclusion of the game and decide which scenes you can cut out or shrink down without breaking the story. You might remove a lot of the monsters in a non-vital combat encounter, for example, or eliminate it completely. When timing your session, be ready to cut things out so players can have that satisfying conclusion.

Keep a Hand on the Clock

It's easy to get caught up in the wonder of our adventures that time simply slips by. Hopefully these tips help you manage the timing of your session and focus the time you have on the fun of the adventures you share with your friends.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Running a D&D 2024 Death Knight and The Ghoul Emperor – Dragon Empire Prep Session 48.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

During prep, write down a way to tie each character to the upcoming events of your next session.
Use maps, NPC portraits, and props to draw players into the world.
Sandwich mechanics with in-world descriptions.
Ask players what they dig about their characters.
Note and review character special features. Describe when they might be useful during the game.
Rework published adventures until you are proud of running them.
Ensure characters can make meaningful decisions in each scene.

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