The Most Important Skill as a GM
And how to master it.
Ask ten different GMs what the most important skill behind the screen is, and you’ll hear a lot of good answers: improvisation, rules mastery, worldbuilding, acting, preparation.
In some ways, these all matter. But none of them matter as much as one thing:
The ability to manage the flow of the game.
Everything else—your prep, keyed hexes, and lovingly drawn maps—sits on top of this. If you can keep the game moving in a fun way, your players will forgive gaps in the rules, forgotten lore, or even the occasional fumbled dice roll.
If you can’t, no amount of detail or prep will save your game.
Why Pacing Matters
Think about the games that stuck with you: the ones where the group buzzed after, already talking about the next session. Those games didn’t necessarily have the most detailed setting or accurate monster stat blocks.
They were the ones where you never felt bored.
Players remember feeling something at the table—tension, excitement, laughter, relief. Pacing is how you build those feelings. Too slow, and players disengage. Too fast and they burn out. Good pacing hits the sweet spot where everyone feels like they’re getting somewhere and want to return for more.
The Three Layers of Pacing
Pacing operates on three levels at once. Think of them like gears in a machine:
Session Pacing. The rhythm of a single game night.
Are you dragging out travel for an hour, or cutting straight to the action?
Do your players get a mix of highs and lows, and do they have chances to breathe between fights and crises?
Scene Pacing. The beats inside a given encounter or roleplay moment.
Do you keep dialogue moving, skip needless detail, and know when to cut a scene short before it overstays its welcome?
Campaign Pacing. The long arc of play.
Do sessions build on one another, rising toward meaningful climaxes?
Or does every week feel like a disconnected side quest?
When all three layers align, your table feels smooth as butter. When they don’t, you get uneven sessions where players leave unsure if they’re excited for the next game.
Let’s look at some of the common issues GMs can encounter when running games that throw off pacing.
Common Pacing Mistakes and Their Solutions
Most GMs don’t struggle because they lack imagination. They struggle because of pacing errors that quietly sap momentum.
Some of the big ones:
Lingering too long on logistics. If your group is debating rations for 20 minutes, you’ve lost the thread.
Solution? Let the players debate their inventories or the general drudgery on their own time. Play time should be play time.
Over-explaining. Description is good, but a two-paragraph monologue about a door knob isn’t.
Solution? Encourage your players to ask questions (and don’t punish them for doing so!) so that if you didn’t cover something, a player can ask for more detail on their terms.
Entertaining everything. Sometimes it’s okay to say no to a player’s harebrained scheme. If you listen to everything as though every idea is gold, then none of them are.
Solution? A firm “no” can get you a long way, but the “no, but” or “yes, but” can be used sparingly as well.
No breaks. If you only serve nonstop intensity, players burn out. If you only serve downtime, they drift.
Solution? We’re not 14 anymore! Adults need breaks. Err on the side of giving too many rather than not enough. Better yet, each hour of play, make sure to touch base with the group with a quick “How’s everyone feeling? Do we need a quick 5-minute break?”
Never moving on. Some scenes just aren’t clicking. It’s better to cut early than bleed table energy dry. Some of the worst examples are combat scenes when one stubborn enemy won’t die or exploration scenes when confusion around the mental image of the scene stunts progress.
Solution? If the group is stuck, help them get unstuck. Tell them the answer as their friend, not their GM. If it’s not creating meaningful play opportunities—things that actively change the story or the characters in a long-lasting or critical way—then just skip the situation and move on!
Recognizing these habits is step one. Fixing them is step two.
More Tools on How to Master Pacing
Here are practical tools you can use right away:
Watch the table, not the notes. Your prep is there to serve the players, not vice versa. Refer to your notes and keyed locations when needed, but if you notice eyes wandering or side chatter growing, change gears ASAP.
Use the clock. Break your session into chunks: opening, middle, and closing. If you’re 90 minutes in and still on the “opening,” it’s time to move things along.
End on a high. Always try to wrap up with a new complication. Cliffhangers, revelations, or successes allow Players to leave energized, not drained.
Practice cutting. Don’t be afraid to say, “We’ll move on from this scene. ” Momentum beats realism.
Mix tempos. Alternate between combat, exploration, dungeon crawling, roleplay, and downtime. Variety keeps energy fresh and ensures no one procedure dominates play.
Check in often. Ask: “How are we feeling?” A quick pulse check gives you instant feedback. Players might want a break for the restroom or a snack. Something that got glossed over earlier might need some clarification.
Like any skill, pacing improves with practice. The more you pay attention to it, the more natural it becomes.
Don’t expect to nail these on your first go-around after paying attention to them, either! Unfortunately, getting better requires putting in the reps by running more games.
The funny thing about pacing is that players don't notice it when it’s done well. They remember the night felt great. That’s the mark of a good GM—not how loudly they perform or how thick their prep binder is, but how naturally they keep the game moving forward.
So if you take something from this article, let it be this:
Keep your eye on the rhythm of play.
Don’t get trapped in your own notes.
Don’t let scenes drag past their expiration date.
And don’t always mistake “realism” for “fun.”
Do that, and your players will always come back for more.
Great article. I would add that a really good way to hone this skillset is to run a lot of one shot games in a set timeslot. Puts you through your paces, so to speak! You really learn to use a lot of the techniques to keep things rumbling along at a clip so you can conclude in good time.
You also need to learn where to cut, in that format. If there's fat you can trim from an adventure in terms of extraneous scenes, locations or activities, you learn to cut from the middle, preserving the intro and the conclusion.
Nice article
But I am irrationally mad that you listed 3 types of pacing in neither ascending nor descending order in terms of their scale/scope