@Skallawag
I couldn’t agree more. If empty rooms are just there for flavour then either remove them from the adventure or try to create good role-playing opportunities. Don’t waste time searching through empty room after empty room. Keep the game moving.

@Mike
I think your idea is great. A skill challenge could certainly cover a lot of ground while keeping the players engaged. I really like your reference to a montage, that’s exactly how I’d envision a skill challenge of this sort. Good call.

@Suddry
Using a blog or email to give players out-of-game opportunities to develop their characters is a great idea. As you mentioned, a weekly game run for 4 hours doesn’t leave a lot of room for non-essential extras. But I think the players get out of it what they put in. If they want to check every room for loot, then that’s their call. The DM needs to encourage them to put their time and effort to the best use during the game. Good suggestions, Suddry.

I really struggle with this issue as a DM sometimes. I love roleplay. I really do. However as DM my main role is to keep the game moving and the players interested. Creeping through empty “rooms” doesn’t add a lot of fun to the game for me and by the look on my players eye-glazed faces, most of them don’t either. Who wants to spend 15 real minutes searching a room or talking to every NPC in the bar just because? (Of course if that is what the group finds fun then the DM should oblige!)

My goal as DM is to try and get through 3 encounters a session. It can be hard enough getting through “real” encounters in a 4 hour time slot without adding too much extra stuff in. Not only that, it doesn’t take long before the PCs are getting frustrated because they think they are missing something. (Of course that could very well be the result of consistantly making each stop have a reward or some meaning. “We are rolling dice. Hmm… must be something here.”)

I agree with Mike’s comment above. The in-between can be handled with skill challenges if you want. That said, I suck at them which is probably an issue that holds me back as a 4E DM.

Here is my view on role-play: I like high-level character building to occur in session and details to occur on our blog site or via email between sessions. I feel roleplay really shines when your character plays actually makes decisions like the character would during the “real” encounters. Meta-gaming and snail-pace trap-checking be damned. Roleplay your character in game and the game stays fun.

(edit: Not changing my comment at all but I want to clarify that I really enjoyed this blogpost. There are some good thoughts here that can easily be used to better any DM’s skillset. Keep it up!)

One time I ran a one-shot adventure of Castle Ravenloft for some friends. It had only five encounters, three of which were combat and two skill challenges. They basically navigated all of the castle with a single large skill challenge that included handling clouds of bats, the female spectres of Strahd’s dead concubines, dealing with huge mechanical traps, and all sorts of other things. Some of the players liked it – some didn’t, but it got the idea across that they traveled through the whole castle, a bunch of stuff happened, and now they’re at Strahd. For a one-shot it worked well.

That’s probably how I’d handle the dead rooms in between the others. I also hand-wave them with a “you travel through a network of coordiors and rooms, avoiding or cutting down nasty beasts until you reach…this place!”

Think of it as a montage in a movie or show. They skip a whole pile of stuff, just showing little slivers of what’s happening, and then get back to the juicy parts.

Why are there 3 rooms if there is no significance to the rooms? If there’s no significance, then why not just remove it from the adventure… you’re the DM after all.

Pacing and balance are key, and something the DM really needs to pick up on.