Every minute at the table is a precious commodity. As a gamemaster, you spend real world game time – the most limited and therefore most precious meta-resource in your campaign – every time you zoom into the moment-to-moment play of a scene. The key to using that resource wisely lies in understanding one deceptively simple idea: The agenda. When a scene has a clear agenda, it moves with purpose, stays engaging, and ends when its job is done. When it hasn’t, it drifts, slows the pacing, and quietly wastes time that could have served something more exciting.

Understanding a scene’s agenda is not about theory; it is about control. By knowing exactly why the scene exists, you decide how long to play it, when to shift focus, and how to keep momentum. Let’s explore what makes a well-framed scene work – and how the agenda drives the rhythm of your session.

Agenda and Scene Structure: The Core of Scene Pacing

Every roleplaying session is built from scenes. Each one has a start, a middle, and an end, and together they define the pacing of your session’s story. If you understand how those scenes work, you can control how your session feels – whether it’s fast and sharp, or slow and deliberate.

Before diving into the practical side of pacing, let’s look at what a scene actually contains.

What a Scene Contains: Agenda, Bang, Location and Characters, Ending

In brief, a scene has four key elements that give it structure and clarity:

1. The agenda – what the scene is about. You can think of it as the question the scene is asking. It could be as direct as “Can the players outrun the collapsing bridge?”, “Can the thief persuade the guard to look the other way?”, or “Can the crew navigate the storm before the mast snaps?” The specific question doesn’t matter that much – what matters is that the agenda creates purpose. Once the question is answered, the scene is done.
2. The bang – the spark that makes the scene come alive. It’s the inciting incident that kicks things off. The bang doesn’t need to be dramatic or violent; it simply needs to introduce movement. It’s that shift in the situation that demands a decision or an action. It’s the reason why the gamemaster says: What do you do?
   The word “bang” was originally coined by Ron Edwards with a very narrow meaning, linked to his specific approach to narrativist play. Here, the term is used in a broader sense – as a general tool that applies to any play style where a moment of decision drives the action forward.
3. The location and characters – a scene happens somewhere, and it involves someone.
4. The ending – which may or may not resolve the original agenda. Sometimes you’ll answer the question directly: the heroes escape, the negotiation fails, the thief is caught. Other times the scene closes without resolving the agenda’s question, but that very lack of resolution creates new consequences or questions.

Understanding these four parts – agenda, bang, location and characters, and ending – gives you a map for managing the flow of your session. Every time you cut into a scene, you should know these four things. If you can’t, you probably don’t need to play that scene out in detail.

Deciding What the Scene Is For

Every strong scene begins with a reason to exist. As a GM, you decide why the moment is worth time at the table. The easiest way to find that reason is to ask a simple question: What is the purpose of this scene?

If you can’t answer that question, the scene doesn’t have an agenda. In that case, summarize what happens quickly and move on to something more meaningful. Real world game time should be spent on decisions, not transitions. Cut as close as possible to the next meaningful choice. Skip the empty time between. The goal is to focus only on moments that demand decisions or reveal consequences. Every minute you save in unimportant time becomes more real world game time for meaningful play.

Think of the agenda as the scene’s heartbeat. It is the specific question that defines what’s at stake. Maybe the players want to convince a merchant to sell a restricted item. Maybe they’re searching a ruined hall for clues. Maybe they’re trying to learn whether the baron is lying. Each of those questions sets an agenda, and each one naturally suggests when the scene ends: When the question is answered, one way or another.

When you’re opening a new scene, establish two things clearly and quickly: the agenda and the bang. Ask yourself – or fish for prompts from your players – “Why are the player characters here?” and “What’s about to happen?” The first question locks in the scene’s purpose; the second provides the motion that makes it come alive.

Agendas don’t have to be grand or heavy. They just need to make the scene worth playing. Even a light social exchange or quick exploration moment can have a focused agenda if it asks something specific. The sharper your question, the easier it will be to keep your pacing crisp.

When the Scene Is Done

Knowing when to end a scene is as important as knowing how to start one. The biggest enemy of pacing is inertia – that slow, lingering drift when a scene keeps going after it has already answered its question. Once the agenda is resolved or clearly stalled, it’s time to move on.

Here are three practical pacing rules to guide your timing:

1. Cut on the goal.
   If the scene revolves around achieving a logistical objective – extracting information, finding an item, or crossing a barrier – end it as soon as the goal is achieved. Often you can cut immediately on success or failure. A short denouement can help transition, but once the task is done, move to the next interesting moment. That clean break reinforces the agenda-driven structure of play.
2. Cut on the second lull.
   In social or roleplaying scenes, the first lull in conversation usually signals that players are recalibrating. They’re figuring out what they want to do next. Wait through that first lull, because it often leads to a new burst of direction. But if you reach a second lull – that sense that everyone has run out of meaningful action – that’s your cue. The question of the scene asked by the agenda has been answered, or can’t be answered right now. Either way, it’s time to cut.
3. Cut faster in combat.
   Combat scenes are inherently time-hungry. Even a single fight can consume large chunks of real world game time. Your overriding goal should be to resolve them faster. Action scenes should focus around tension and decisions, not bookkeeping.

By following these principles, you make sure that every minute of play serves a purpose. When scenes end cleanly, your session flows naturally, maintaining its energy and pacing.

Putting Agenda into Practice

Every scene you run is a decision about where to spend your group’s real world game time. Agenda gives that decision structure. When you know the question a scene is asking, you know when to start, how to drive it forward, and when to end it. You can skip the filler and focus only on meaningful moments – the ones that justify consuming real world game time.

When you open a scene, clarify two things: its purpose (the agenda) and its spark (the bang). When you end a scene, do it on the moment of resolution or the second lull. Between those two points lies everything that makes pacing work.

A GM who practices this habit doesn’t need to rush or stretch scenes artificially. Instead, pacing becomes the natural rhythm of attention: fast where curiosity is high, brief where outcomes are obvious. By filtering each scene through its agenda, you automatically prioritize what deserves detail and what can be skipped.

Ultimately, scene-level pacing is not about speed but about focus. The agenda tells you what’s important right now. The bang tells you where it starts. The ending tells you when to let it go. As you apply these principles, remember that perfection isn’t the goal. Especially for beginning GMs, pacing can wait while you learn other essentials. It will come naturally with practice. Once it does, it will become your quietest, most reliable tool for keeping sessions engaging.

This discussion was inspired by insights from Justin Alexander’s blog The Alexandrian, particularly his essays from 2013 and 2023, which explored how agendas, bangs, and scene framing define the rhythm of tabletop storytelling.