A tool for pacing

This is a half-baked idea for managing the pacing of RPGs. You have a restricted amount of time in a play session, and plenty of flexibility in how much in-game time that can represent. (Consider something like Microscope, for the extreme example of covering eons of in-game time in a single session.)

Groups form habits about when to zoom in for detailed scenes or zoom out for montages. Maybe they read cues, spoken or unspoken, to make those decisions. Maybe the specific game gives direction on it.

I'm aiming here to have a modular mechanic that can be thrown into any game to handle this.

On the table, place a sheet with three circles marked on it. One circle is marked "play the scene", another is marked "resolve the scene", the third is marked "cut away".

During play, when a clear idea of the next scenario/scene has formed, each person places a d6 in the circle of their choice.

Putting your die in "play the scene" is a quick non-verbal communication of "I like the sound of this, let's zoom in and play through it".

Choosing "Resolve the scene" is a way of saying "I'm interested in the outcome of this situation and I want to get straight to the consequences. Let's use some mechanics of the game to quickly resolve how this turns out."

"Cut away" says "This is not what I want to focus on right now, let's skip onwards."

A player may also not place their die, which I think communicates "I'm just going with the flow," which is fine too.

What I think this would achieve is a really quick declaration of how people want to manage the next chunk of session time.

The most gentle application of this idea, is that the GM glances at that, and uses the polling data to inform (but not dictate) their decisions. (Or if it is a more democratic style game, the group do the same thing.)

To be more directed - go with the majority. If there's a tie, roll the dice to see which comes out on top.

I think everything so far is kind of not very useful. It is all equivalent to just having a quick chat. It is *maybe* a little quicker.

Where this *might* become more useful is that, while playing through a scene, you could move your die. It is a silent (hopefully non-disruptive) way to say "I think we've actually just answered the important question here, and I'm ready to move on". (I'm conscious that silent forms of communication aren't accessible to all players, maybe their are other subtle cues that could be used.)

In practical appearance, it might look something like a safety tool, but with an entirely different purpose. It is purely for the pacing of the session.

Maybe, because it's a die with numbers, you could also rotate it to show emphasis. A 1 for "I'm happy to move on, but also happy to hang out in this scene," and higher numbers for "Come on, let's move on." (I imagine that 1,2,3 give enough granularity for those opinions, and if you ever use a 6 you are banned from the group for life.)

Could this be a way for people to be rude and basically give a thumbs down anytime they don't like someone roleplaying in depth? Yes, that sucks, and I can only suggest to be cool.

I probably don't read enough games to know whether there is already something like this in use. Do let me know if there is.