Skipping Ahead Between Sessions

A lot of times, players will drag plans out, spending an hour talking through HOW they’re going to get past an area or complete some mundane task. It’s fun for them to act like they’re planning some real life heist, but then ends up as quite a letdown when there was nothing exciting to get in their way and you aren’t able to come up with anything to make it more interesting. Sometimes, you can just skip ahead.

A few sessions ago, in my Star Wars campaign, the Jedi had found their way to Vader’s Fortress on Mustafar. They approached the ruins, and began planning on how exactly they were going to get into the building. About 15 minutes in, one player said they needed to get going, so we decided to stop for the night. The following week, rather than pick up exactly where they were so they could spend another half hour planning on how to get into this place, I simply had the session begin with them peeking over the top of a balcony, having snuck into the fortress so that they were already in the scene. The interesting thing about the story wasn’t getting in, it was this central set piece around a portal to another world.

In the same vein, in the next session of my D&D campaign, the players have finished clearing out a dungeon, and should be preparing to free up some prisoners and collect a little loot. It’s pretty mundane stuff. The whole thing took place at night, so instead, I’ll be opening the session with them arriving back in town just as the sun rises, conquering heroes who saved the village from the vicous Redbrands and brought back the enslaved prisoners.

Skipping forward can move things to more dramatic and interesting moments and pull players immediately into the session. If the Star Wars session began with more planning on how to get in, there would likely be a lot of distraction as the players settled into the game night. Instead, it hit them with a whollop. “You’re now inside, you see some strange ritual going on. What do you do now?!”

Star Wars is especially useful at this, because with hyperspace travel, a lot of sessions end with a jump to hyperspace. You can begin the new session with the ship dropping into realspace at their destination rather than long “what do you want to do in the two days it takes” discussions.

Incorporating Downtime in D&D is a great way to use this too. The players arrive in Waterdeep to end the session. Rather than open the next session with asking the players what they want to do with their time, between sessions, just ask what downtime they want to engage in. The following session, you can move RIGHT into the action of the story.

I’ve taken to planning the end of each session so that it allows for a jump forward in the story. It makes things move a lot smoother, allowing an immediate dive into exciting adventure at the start of each game.