Few arrows in your GMing quiver are as versatile, valuable and powerful as the five-minute break. If a problem arises, whether it’s on your side of the screen or not, taking a short break is nearly always a good idea.
It gives everyone a chance to hit the bathroom, refill the snack bowl, grab a drink or stretch their legs, and it gives you a few minutes to clear your head and find a way to solve the problem.
Here are seven common situations in which stopping the session for five minutes will help you keep it from grinding to a halt (usually for a lot longer than five minutes):
- Your players are stuck.
- Something is about to happen that could derail the whole session.
- You realize you’ve forgotten to address something vital (create an NPC, adjust a monster’s stats, etc.).
- One of your players is pissed.
- A PC was just killed (or more than one PC).
- Your group looks bored.
- You need to improvise an encounter.
Breaks are a good idea every couple of hours even if everything’s going smoothly, especially after long battles or scenes with lots of intense roleplaying — but if something is amiss, taking five is always a good place to start.
I should print this out on an index card and clip it to my side of the screen.
As a player, I’ll try to remember to suggest a break when the game goes awry. Because as GM, it’s probably the last thing I’d think about, and it’d be nice if one of my players suggested it when I get in the weeds.
I’m surprised you left “one of your players is having giggle fits” off the list! 😉
I’m bad about taking the breaks– like Telas suggests, I should really take a moment to put this up on my side of the screen.
Since we play for roughly 6 – 7 hours a session, we have always instituted the mandatory 5-minute break every 2 hours. We were bad at breaks, so much so that we forgot to take them and we would burn out about 3 hours in and the session would dissolve, regardless of the fun we were having.
So, about a year ago, we bought an alarm clock that had a countdown timer on it and we set it to two hours. After two hours, the alarm would go off and we would take a 5-minute break. We then reset the timer and after another 2 hours, the alarm would go off and we then take our 30-minute dinner break. After that, we reset the timer one last time but we normally play straight through until time to end the session, unless the group is in the middle of something, then we will take that 5-minute break then finish up.