Using Progress Clocks from Blades in the Dark in your D&D Game 

This sounds like an easy to visualize version of a Skill Challenge. I love this. Going to try it out.

I do agree with you strongly that it is generally inadvisable to hide Clocks. A Clock is a visualisation tool, it is used to communicate information about complexity and nature of the ongoing situation, using it's label and size. If you want to conceal something - you can use Clocks with ominous, unclear labels, like "The Empty Vessel craves your soul" or "They ??? !!!" But if you don't want to convey any information - it means that you don't have to start a Clock.

Progress clocks in Blades are great. Typically in Blades you don't decide ahead of time what the specific steps are in a clock, rather you decide during play if an action might add a tick to a clock. So rather than saying 'These 6 ticks are each one of the 6 gang lords you need to convince,' you just label a clock 'Convince the gang lords', giving the GM and players freedom to add ticks to it later in whatever way feels right at the time.

I used this recently in my game and my players loved it. They were sneaking into a cult's base. As they arrived, I drew a circle and divided into 4 sections. I said that each failed check results in a section being filled and then the base would be alerted to them (also, the quest giver specifically said NOT to be seen, so no murder-hoboing). One way I rewarded them was when they remembered they already had cultist robes they found previously and kept. When they put them on, I drew another line so the clock was now 6 sections so more failed rolls were needed to lose.

I've been using Progress Clocks in my Icewind Dale: RotF campaign and have had great success associating them with character secrets so players can surprise each other with reveals. But Mike's tips on clock specificity and disposability are wonderful additions for me!

Might be worth mentioning that GMs are completely in charge of Progress Clocks: creating and ticking them. I remember that being easy to misunderstand at first, and things get weird if you do.

Great video, this rule works better for heist adventures, but in a way it is basically the chase rules. I was planning to use progress clocks in my Strixhaven game for the exams you have to take. Keep in mind heist adventures work well because the story has happen and that you are failing forward to the conclusion. The failure is what makes the story better, but most people never want to fail in 5e for some reason.

Mike ty! Just to say, I received return of the lazy DM for Christmas , and it has already transformed my game

I made a video about this exact same topic! I love clocks for this purpose. They have really helped up the verisimilitude of my games.

I saw a reddit discussion about what people take from other games to their dnd table. A couple posters had mentioned progress clocks, and then I found this video! I appreciate the expanded information, I wonder if there is a way to integrate some of their features into the notion campaign note database to add to your template, for longer term clocks.

I recently used Progress Clocks in White Plume Mountain to keep track of the geysers in the Geysers and Chains room. I kept them hidden with plans to show them once someone succeeded in an Investigation or similar roll to represent the characters figuring out the pattern.

This is something I do behind the screen for skill challenges.

I've been thinking about this lately and I found that progress clocks in theater of the mind remote play require some thinking. I finally ended with several premade different clocks in different positions that I can show to the player using the camera. this is because sometimes clocks can go back, so having all the steps pre-prepared is handy. I ended with little bundles of 4, 6 and 8 pieces clocks that I can reuse and abuse.

Savage worlds does this really well with Dramatic Tasks. Ironsworn does this with progress tracks.

I wonder how well this would work on a campaign scale? I know a lot of "campaign simulator" type board games, like Runebound, use a sort of doom clock mechanic. I wonder if this might be a cool way to keep players motivated in a campaign. Set the goal and then set the clock with certain key things needed to keep the clock held at bay or advancing the clock toward "doom".

Another mechanic I steal from Blades is the flashback mechanic. I play Pathfinder 2e, so sometimes (usually specific sessions I'll call it out as being allowed for that session) I'll let a player cash in a hero point for a flashback, and just start them in media res for the session. Works well for heists, but also anything else that needs a huge amount of planning in game, like a complex ritual or delicate intrigue situation.

I like progress clocks and how they're used in Blades and other PbtA games. I feel like clocks have been around at least since Shadowrun and the White Wolf Storyteller games, if not even before, because as soon as you have a count up or countdown and accumulate successes over multiple rolls, there's a clock. The specifics of the implementation in Blades is maybe a bit different than in some other games, but isn't that always the case for any particular game? What I don't get is the intense love or intense hate for clocks or the idea that it is a very opaque, obscure mechanic. I feel like it all came from people resenting an indie game for adding theming to a mechanic, or maybe less for that and more for people thinking it was something new. Or maybe just the fact that there is a graphic component, or that it has a name instead of just discussing it as an accumulation of successes, or that there was an open-endedness to how they could be used... I dunno. I don't understand why people get all worked up over stuff. But then, I also don't understand the intensity of pro sport fandom, or how every fandom seems to end up turning into something judgemental and exclusive of adjacent fandoms. Huh. That went off in a weird direction. Sorry, didn't mean to rant!

Great suggestion! And now I want a follow-up on how this concept might be applied to HP in D&D 🤔 💡

thank you

Could progress clocks be used to abstract a seige between an attacking force and a defending force inside a fortress? Success/Failure being represented by something like: Reinforce+defend the archers on the walkway Vs, The Archers are cut off and over run.

Today I learned that "progress clocks" is a dangerous tongue twister.

Are any labels added to clocks? As a title of for each step? I am intrigued by the idea and trying to wrap my head around it.

To those of you DM's that have used both Progress Clocks and skill challenges: Would you say Clocks > Challenges ? or perhaps it depends on the situation? At first glance PG's seem more flexible to me. Where do you think a SC would be the superior option?

Do you have a resource that shows this visually? I'm having a tough time iimagining how I'd fold these into my games (all remote on owlbear rodeo)

I disagree strongly that clock segments should always represent concrete steps but I can't think of a single reason why, I just feel it in my gut. Foiled by the lazy dungeon master once again.

This reminds me of skill challenges from 4e, but I actually prefer this analogy of clocks or other mechanical devices.

What I struggle with is how to implement a major plot clock, if the PCs are trying to stop a cult ritual then surely no matter how fast they progress the final denouement will be confronting the BBEG mid ritual?

all non combat checks suceed and are are minutes= DC20 - roll (minimum1) x 1d4CR this lock is lvl3. I roll a 15 on tool check. 20-15=5min. 5min x 3lock= 15 minutes to picklock. the guards will come back in 2d20 minutes. try to roll higher than 15.

I tried watching this video, but I need the captions because of severe hearing loss. The captions are an incomprehensible mess, and there are no visuals to help me figure out what the captions are saying. The only captioning option is marked "Vietnamese (auto-generated)," which might explain the problem. Here's an example excerpt from the captions: "other major influence tongo congress and gentle Monster a worthy of Heart." Beats me what that's supposed to mean.

Still having trouble wrapping my brain around progress clocks .....

Progress clocks are just skill endeavors with a bit more detail. Edit: this isn't to degenerate progress clocks. They are good tool. Just my base opinion.

Speaking of complex situations, this sounds like an unnecessarily complex way of describing requiring multiple skill challenges, possibly contested and/or gradually increasing. :) FWIW I would suggest that whether are not the rolls are visible to the players depends on whether the characters are aware of the outcomes. For some challenges, especially contested challenges, that might mean players only see some of the results.

I feel like progress clocks, especially improvised ones that you come up with to deal with novel situations, SHOULD be hidden from players. At least, the exact details should be hidden. Players should understand that they will need to succeed on multiple steps, but I feel like giving players every detail of the progress clock can take away from the power of the narrative and from tension. Having later stages of the progress clock only become apparent to players after they have completed earlier stages, really increases verisimilitude and tension. That means that their progress through a progress clock is actually part of the Exploration pillar!

This describes 4E's mutable skill challenge system pretty well. Which is a little nutty because people loudly rejected and disliked that during 4E's time, but everywhere you look these skill challenge like approaches are bubbling up and finding popularity today. /shrug

Isn't this just skills challenges from 4e?

Feel free to pull the camera back a bit.

I'll be honest, I never quite got the hype around "progress clocks". It's like everyone collectively agreed that common sense adventure writing was something invented and copyrighted by this one indie TTRPG about heists. Like, yes, of course, the plot will progress. Usually in a series of steps. Maybe you represent this with a pie chart, maybe you represent this with a number that goes from 0 to 4, maybe you give each step a name. Doesn't make a difference as far as I'm concerned. I don't get it. Coming from an IT background, this is the same cult shit as I see every day. Nooo, we're not "talking about what to do next", we're honoring our Scrum Rituals to please our holy text, the Agile Manifesto! Oooh! So marketable!