Giving your players a time-out at the right moment

You know that place in Dragonball, the time temple near God that gives a fighter 1 year of training for one day outside ?

I kinda did this for my players.

I gave them permission for the full week to interact through roleplaying on the Discord channel of roleplaying as if it was happening instantly.

Why ?

Because we were at a very very very important crossroad for everyone and there wasn't a single second to discuss it at the start of the next session, which was starting with a battle that included 4 dragons, one of which was an ancient red.

And... well, it's both important and just fun to discuss in character of what to do when shit hit the fan, especially when you see a few ways the whole campaign could go to and you don't know for sure which is the actual good one for everyone.

It worked... sorta. Not everyone was on the same side, 2 of them prefered to leave the group and 2 joined with the bad guy that was their boss at the moment. And since the direction the campaign took then didn't really satisfied anyone, in the end I retconned before the very first big "oh no" happened.

But yeah, that metagaming bubble is a tool I'm glad that I have used, even if the result wasn't perfect. Highly recommand it, if you want to give your players a small hiatus of talking between sessions.