I’ve been needling around in the low-energy, low-urgency space with some of my designs for the last couple of years and I’m still trying to sort out not just how to make it work, but also my feelings about it.

I’ve designed mechanics that slow the game down hard and I it works sometimes, but when it doesn’t the players start to connect story threads and amp things up while the game doesn’t give them those tools. At these times, I wonder, should my game (or me as facilitator/GM) accommodate the player’s desires or is it simply not the right game for them?

The game I’m working on now doesn’t really have pacing mechanics at all (which is weird for me) and it’s kind of freeing in that we’ll have to rely on our guts to tell us how hard or slow or whatever to go.