Or is it just me?
Perhaps there's a more efficient way of doing it, but everytime an AP hits a 'dungeon crawl' section of a game, the pace of the game slows to a snail's pace. Some players don't even bother moving their tokens in Roll20 (possibly deters those who find it bothersome).
Anyone have any tips?
Rednal's right.
Some of my "tricks":
If they have no reason to pick a direction, I'll randomly determine a direction for them.
If they are exploring, I'll also give them several rooms at a time when there's no combat involved in them.
Use spoilers in rooms for Perception checks in rooms (though as I've explained to my players I spoiler things that they may notice with a passive check; if something requires them to, say, examine a painting to notice it, I don't give them anything there unless they say they're doing it).
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Based on Discord experience, it is not too bad as long as you incorporate 'shortcuts' like GM Rednal and Motteditor mentioned above.
I am planning on testing out the Talented Bestiary soon with an AD&D-style dungeon crawl with one of the most contrived plotlines since Twilight, so I will find out if the general flow of PBP works the same here.
I also have them pick routes in advance and then auto roll them through rooms until they hit a combat.
But yes, doors are the biggest enemies in PBP! I recommend that parties decide on a standard door-opening procedure and go with it!
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I once played through a dungeon in PbP where we pre-agreed that we were always going to go left (I think?) when we had an option and there wasn't anything obvious in a different direction. It sped things up a great deal.
Assuming that everyone is taking 10 on Stealth/Perception while exploring also saves rolls and decision points.
Use spoilers in rooms for Perception checks in rooms (though as I've explained to my players I spoiler things that they may notice with a passive check; if something requires them to, say, examine a painting to notice it, I don't give them anything there unless they say they're doing it).
My experience with this is players simply don't check at all unless it's in spoilers. Their loss I suppose. Complete opposite experience I have from table top games where typically unless it's nailed down (and even then) it's going to get looted!
I think PbP requires a lot of impetus and focus from the participants to not get bogged down, not just in exploration but in discussion. I'm still working to find the balance of letting the players have their head versus pushing and prodding them along.
In my experience, the degree of slog is directly proportional to the number of rooms that don't contain any monsters and/or treasure.
This has happened, definitely, yes.
Key issue is that often the players who don't have scouting abilities just turtle in and post nothing (even when you beg and beg and beg them to at least post to say OOC they're ready to move on), and everyone's just waiting for the scouts to move forward. It's even worse when the scouts are also the best combatants because in the worst case scenario they can just stroll down and take everything out and no one has to do anything. It's important not to accidentally let the game become a solo adventure.
On the "waiting for the scouts" bit I agree putting in Perception spoilers ahead of time helps. I also like Joana's suggestion of "everyone takes 10 on Perception/Stealth" - people can volunteer to roll, but I'd reckon that'd save a lot of time and waiting and I may try that soon, as I've got a dungeon crawl segment in my game coming up.
On the "other people don't do stuff" part... well, that can also vary with how well the dungeon is designed. But I think it is important where possible to find stuff for other players to do if they don't feel they can contribute to the crawl. Let their Knowledge checks on interesting architecture produce a cool result, let them find little pieces of a puzzle they can put together. Combats also need to be varied. Work in flight, swimming, difficult terrain, stuff that helps different people shine in different ways, and so that one person isn't always doing all the work (which has happened).
The other thing is to urge roleplay. The success of this varies depending on the group--some really like to chat and RP and others really don't care and just want to kick in the door and kill the monster. But if you can urge them toward RP then they feel like they have something to do even if they're not rolling any dice. The one dungeon crawl I was in recently that didn't feel sloggy (even if it took us awhile in realtime to get through) was one where everyone was actively talking to each other.
And where it really is slogging things down, then just fast forward. As noted, pick a direction and move in it. You don't have to go room by room by room if some of the rooms are featureless.
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If they are exploring, I'll also give them several rooms at a time when there's no combat involved in them.
In my experience, the degree of slog is directly proportional to the number of rooms that don't contain any monsters and/or treasure.
I'm quoting both of these, because they're both relevant to what I'm about to say.
Part of an AP's design is to make sure that players earn the correct amount of experience points to be at the correct level for the next section of the AP. This means that there are lots of filler encounters, aka encounters that aren't important to advancing the story.
APs are designed for table-top gaming, not PbPs, and dungeon crawls in PbPs make this even more apparent. You can make an AP work better for a PbP, but it requires tweaking the encounters. Remove the filler encounters; replace them with encounters that advance the story, or make the non-filler encounters worth more XP. Another popular option is to not track XP at all, and just advance the PCs at logical points throughout the AP. AP dungeon crawls require further tweaking, but you don't want to tweak it so much that you have a mostly empty dungeon. Personally, I have no problem shrinking a dungeon so that the dungeon only tells the part of an AP's story it needs to tell, not worrying about the mooks and random encounters. Keep the fun rooms that contain interesting puzzles, crazy creatures a PC isn't going to see anywhere else, and the boss/sub-boss rooms (and increase their challenge), but lose the rooms that are nothing but pit traps and common warrior humanoid tribes.