2026-03-08 Time pressure in dungeon adventures is a bad idea
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I am using a Pathfinder dungeon for my AD&D game and the introduction
of story elements like kidnapped children about to get sacrificed is
at odds with old school dungeon exploration.

The party travelled through the forest and suffered a random encounter
with a harpy. They beat the monster but had to retreat back to town. A
plot cleric showed up -- that's me judging that every small village
probably has a village cleric that knows how to cast cure light
wounds. It's still the same day, so the party goes back through the
forest, finds the dungeon, traverses the first level, fights the boss
guarding the entrance to the second level and retreats back to town.
More healing. Uhm, now what? The children are about to be sacrificed!
One of the players got enough experience points to level up so their
character has to spend a week in training (this is AD&D 1st ed.!) and
so they create a new level 1 character to join the expedition the next
day.

The party ninja descends the elevator shaft and gets into a fight with
two kobolds armed with spears, javelins and riding sabre-tooth toads.
The halfling rangers quaffs a potion of flying and flies down there
to aid their comrade. The two fighters jump into the elevator basked
only to discover that it's rigged and they barely make their saves as
the whole thing crashes. The kobold lancers stab them and they drop,
not quite dead (AD&D 1st ed. means unconscious and bleeding at 0 to
-3, comatose and debilitated for many days at -4 to -9, dead at -10).
The druid, the henchies and the freed kobolds stay at the top of the
elevator.

The battle ends just in time, everybody survives but one of the
fighters is comatose. So we retreat back to town. This is the third
session, the second day in-game and I'm thinking about time pressure
and dungeon-based adventure games.

Judd Karlmann said:

> I don't understand why children about to be eaten by ogres in a
> dungeon is at odds with old school dungeon exploration.

Here is what bothers me about setups under time pressure. The players
immediately start pushing in one direction and don’t take the time to
explore. This is different from having a goal slowly working towards
it. It goes against an idea I cherish: players should be able to pick
the risk/reward level on their own. This frees me as the dungeon
designer from having to design encounters that match the party
(challenge rating and all that). Players can gather information and
decide for themselves if they are up for the challenge; or they run
into situations that are bad and can attempt to retreat. All of this
doesn’t work if the children have to be rescued today.

Plus, if the players don’t complete the mission within the time limit,
there are dire consequences – for these to make sense to the players,
it must be apparent how they failed to meet the challenge, that it
would have been possible if only … without this knowledge, it all
becomes arbitrary. Of course this can all be summed up as “bad design”
because it works in a commercial Pathfinder and D&D 3+ game. Challenge
ratings and all the assumptions that go with it help make sure that it
works.

So how to save the situation? I assume the players don't mind either
way. We're all experienced gamers. This is just me overthinking
things.

I can invent "missing ingredients" as @phf@tabletop.social suggested
or some other plot delay; or I can kill the children and say that true
heroes would have pushed ahead and died trying… That's probably
frustrating. Or something else entirely. Hm. Gotta think of something.


Spoilers! The kobolds offer to let the children go in exchange for something? At first, something outrageous, later, just to be able to leave?

Now I remember having mentioned this before. For example:

> I just need to avoid the time pressure of impending doom that pulls
> players onto rails even if they’d prefer not to. -- 2011-04-28 My
> Sandbox Starts With A Mission

#RPG