this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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This was a weirdly aggressive comment.
You cannot make players pre-plan. The timer encourages pre-planning, or at least rapid decision making on the fly. Both have the desired result of the game moving at a quicker pace.
It also has the benefit of creating an impartial tool for measuring, instead of relying on subjective "You're taking a long time." It is harder to argue with a clock. This is an advantage.
What is the second problem?
I don't really get how my comment is aggressive, since all I did was point out a type of problem GM. There's a suspiciously defensive reply to it that tries to paint it as aggressive, but I disagree.
Yes, you can make players pre-plan. You nudge them.
The timer encourages speed by penalising a slow, methodical approach. You might avoid the penalty by pre-planning, or you might avoid it by taking a simpler action every time. Both make the game move faster, but one makes the game less fun, especially for players like me who enjoy a good shenanigan.
Why does it matter how much time everyone takes? Outside of an argument that shouldn't happen in the first place, why would you need to know? Remember that everyone's moving at a different speed because there's a timer, so you can only measure post-timer, not pre-.
The GM tried to fix long turns by bringing in a timer. The first problem is the long turns, and the second problem is the timer. Pre-planning solves the problem of there being a timer.
The timer also discourages kinds of interactions or engagement with other players that may actually be welcomed, entertaining, and appreciated. It also takes a significant amount of the responsibility of being a referee off the GM's shoulders - you know, that thing that they're actually charged with doing - and turns it over to a clock that they can just use as a cudgle.
It's the classic toxic nerd shit of turning something that should be a social encounter into a souless mechanical system.
No amount of nudging will make some players do anything. Some players are obstinate and frankly not very good, but honestly the solution to "this player won't stop looking at their phone and their turns take forever" may be to remove them from the group.
I don't want to wait 5 minutes for someone to dither and dither and finally decide "I attack"