Going wherever you want and doing whatever you like can be fun, but sometimes, it’s helpful to set a deadline on an adventure to drive the heroes forward and force them to make timely choices. If there’s never any ticking clock, they may ramble and meander and end up feeling aimless.

It’s best to offer players multiple choices, whether it’s their next adventure or the general direction of the campaign or just whether to press on or give up on the current adventure. Then the players can make meaningful decisions.

Some deadlines can be short, but others can be less urgent, allowing the heroes to finish some other task first, if they like. And keep in mind that any adventure can be given a ticking clock if a rival adventuring company shows interest in the reputed rewards.

Here are some ideas for setting a deadline. They can be of use in an RPG or a story you’re creating. The second half of many stories features a ticking clock to ratchet up the tension.

1. Imminent Eldritch Ceremony

Recovered letters show the Ghulian Cult is planning to conduct an eldritch summoning ceremony at the next full moon (2d12 days away).

2. Cave In!

Half-way thru a dungeon, a cave-in triggered by their actions makes it impossible for the heroes to exit the way they came in. They must continue on and find another way out or starve.

3. Imminent Human Sacrifice

The human sacrifice to the sea serpent will take place as soon as the Kinshings move the captive virgin to their ship and put out to sea.

4. Slow Death…

Deep in a dungeon, the heroes are attacked by spiders whose venom slowly saps their strength. A known antidote being available back at the city, they must give up or hurry and secure the treasure as they slowly lose hit points.

5. The Waning Magic

The light of the Malkmar Orb is waning a little each day. The sages say it will last three or four more moons.

6. Dwindling Supplies

The besieged fortress is running out of supplies. They will probably only last a few more days against the hobgoblins.

7. The Dying Princess

The princess is dying. Only oil of gunkwort can save her, and the high meadow in the mountains where gunkwort grows is two days’ ride away. Take our fastest horses!

8. Imperiled Captive

Hours into the Gray Deep caverns, one of the heroes is captured by dark dwarves who seek to feed him or her to their vampire chieftain.

9. Cursed Wanderer

Sir Cavrin has been taken with madness by some foul cursed item and wandered into the Watery Woods. Rescue him before it’s too late! He’s violent, but don’t hurt him!

10. Scheduled Destruction

The old Drovin stronghold has never been explored, and the dam for the new mill will be finished and will flood the area in just two weeks.

11. Royal Demand

The king demands that the task be accomplished in a certain time or the promised prize will be rescinded.

12. Villain in Motion

The Fiend King nearly has his troops readied to march. Infiltrate them and put them in disarray before it’s too late!

Bonus: Option Exhaustion

A similar method for building tension is to give the heroes a small number of options, each of which is known to have only a modest chance of success. They go thru them one by one, each one failing, their chances dwindling.

Of course in an RPG, if each of the options has a genuine chance, you never know when success will come. It could happen early, in which case there was no time for tension to build; late, which is ideal; or never, which is probably a serious problem. However, if you’re playing a hardcore sandbox, you can live with those results as realistic.

If you don’t mind a little artificiality, you can say that early options are somehow automatically less likely but each failure makes the remaining options more likely. This is how the dice countdown timer works. You might say that there are four possible ways to save the princess’ life:

• Gonder fruit, not hard to get hold of but only a sometimes (20% chance) works.
• Velkrat eyes, difficult to get and works half the time (50% chance).
• Hogglepock berries, hard to get but usually (75% chance) works.
• Oil of gunkwort, nearly impossible to get but always works.

Then the heroes can decide for themselves which solution they’d like to go after in what order.