First Steps, Part I: In Service to Lore - Act 3: Treasures of Osirion

[Rendrin]

Act 3 event(s):

I have questions concerning the time limit. The first time I ran this I actually timed my players, pausing when they got sidetracked with OOC stuff and they seemed a little irate that they weren't informed of the time limit. There is nothing mentioned of giving the PCs any warning of their quest being timed and I found some play by post games where their players weren't informed either. Am I right in not informing them ahead of time?

What I am wondering is if I should instead try to time out their character's actions as best as I can given the 6 second round, 2 minutes to take 20, etc. or if it is alright to use an actual timer, as I did previously, since much of the time spent is them discussing what to do.

[Patrick Harris @ SD]

I would only invoke the IC time limit if they were stumped. If they spent too much time debating, use an OOC time limit--tell them the session slot is only four hours, so they need to pick a plan and go with it.

[Mark A. Nattress]

Alright, thank you.

[Dust Raven]

The time limit really is a non-issue. The PCs are never informed of any limit and the tasks they need to perform are likely to be completed in a matter of a few minutes. Perception rolls to search is only a move action (so you can do this 20 times in a minute, or just spend the full minute to take 20), and disabling the one trap will take at most 8 minutes (if taking 20, and likely much faster if not).

I've never had the time limit come into play, and the only circumstance I can see it doing so is only to help move along the scenario if the players are taking to long here and holding up the rest of the scenario.

[Nebten]

You can't take 20 on disabling a trap because there is a chance of failure and setting it off. Also disabling a trap takes 2d4 rounds.