The One Hour D&D Game

Radiating Gnome · Mar 19, 2012

I'm really attracted to the "throttle" idea -- being able to limit the use of minis and tactical encounters to major scenes, being able to quickly handle less significant scenes in 10-30 minutes -- but still have those encounters be interesting and worth playing.

In my 4e game I've experimented from time to time with variations on skill challenges to replace these less complex encounters -- that moves through them quite quickly, but it is a little flat. But if you could play them out quickly, that would be cool.

I'm pretty excited to see what they're working on. My only disappointment so far is how long we've had to wait to see a playtest version (for those of us who haven't been to a con this year, anyway).

-rg

Minigiant · Mar 19, 2012

ExploderWizard said:
The game this was accomplished in was B/X D&D. It is my favorite version of the game published and with players who are not total newbs it is completely possible.

I guess if the bare bones basic system of 5e game with no modules and very limited role play and almost no out of character talk... maybe... maybe you could do it under an hour.

But I wont be playing it that way. I need to act silly, do more than the same action over and over, and roleplay everything.

dkyle · Mar 19, 2012

Radiating Gnome said:
I'm really attracted to the "throttle" idea -- being able to limit the use of minis and tactical encounters to major scenes, being able to quickly handle less significant scenes in 10-30 minutes -- but still have those encounters be interesting and worth playing.

I've contemplated doing something like this from time to time, but it ultimately felt like I couldn't actually have any significant consequences, or else they would feel like DM fiat, because I took away a lot of the options they built their characters with, instead of something truly earned, or deserved. And if there aren't any real consequences, then what's the point of playing it out?

If the system was actually designed to support that kind of throttling within a campaign (as opposed to being a set of per-campaign options), like giving most advanced tactical character options a "simple combat" component to them, that would neat. But that doesn't seem to be their focus.

ExploderWizard · Mar 19, 2012

Minigiant said:
I guess if the bare bones basic system of 5e game with no modules and very limited role play and almost no out of character talk... maybe... maybe you could do it under an hour.

But I wont be playing it that way. I need to act silly, do more than the same action over and over, and roleplay everything.

Roleplay isn't limited. The beauty of minimal mechanics means you get more roleplay time without giving up progressing with in-game activity rather than less. Old school D&D was all about the silly.

Out of character banter and just fooling around will add time to any session,that isn't system specific.

KarinsDad · Mar 19, 2012

Gargoyle said:
The one hour adventure sounds hard to do, but if you've played BECMI (or probably OD&D) you would understand that it is perfectly feasible. Back when:

Character sheets were on one page and you even had room to draw a picture of your character.

I think this is a detriment of 4E (or at least the WotC CB online generated 4E character sheets).

There's nothing worse than flipping through 4 to 8 pages as a player. And there was no reason for 9 powers per page instead of 50 powers per page. 4E could easily fit on 2 pages every time.

One thing that I have not seen any discussion on for 5E is regardless of how complex a player and group makes their game, can it be done with a significant majority of the needed PC info on a one or two pages max character sheet?

grimslade · Mar 19, 2012

Photomat style game

In about an hour you and friends can build characters, explore a dungeon, battle monsters, and start a career of adventure. Would be perfect copy for the Basic Next Box/Book.

The adventure as a unit is interesting. The encounter focus was better from a rules perspective but disjointed from a play perspective. Encounters became individual islands of intense and focused action nestled in a sea of relaxed story and rp moments. This was true for the last couple of editions.
Shifting to an adventure length focus allows for some different design and a true blending of the three pillars into a cohesive whole. It is a difference in designing for scenes vs. designing for Acts. There are lots of stuff impacted by this change in focus, XP allotment is only one. I'm looking forward to seeing how they address adventure design.

An hour for a short 1st level basic adventure with character creation is not a stretch and a worthy goal. I think having system that can support a one hour game is infinitely more accessible than a game that requires an hour just to roll characters. Think of how robust and fulfilling an adventure you could have in a 3 hour session? Each of the 3 'adventures' would be chapters in a larger arc and each of those play sessions can be part of a larger arc and so on.

I hope that options are options and not anchors. Complexity should not be slower by much.

Radiating Gnome · Mar 19, 2012

For 4e DMs who might be interested, I was inspired by this conversation to start a thread in the 4e forum about a system I used to abstract down less important combats so I could try to capture the feel of smaller encounters without the time sink. If you're interested, check it out:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4t...cted-combat-minor-encounters.html#post5855701

Crazy Jerome · Mar 19, 2012

dkyle said:
1) The DM cares about setting up "reasonable challenges". I don't think the XP pool helps in any meaningful way, if both "big combat" and "room-by-room" use the same pool, with the same XP costs for monsters. If one is a "reasonable challenge" according to the XP pool rules, then the other would be either incredibly easy, or incredibly difficult, with the same XP pool.

2) The DM doesn't care about setting up "reasonable challenges", and just wants to play out "what would happen". In which case, an XP pool mechanic is useless. It's besides the point.

This is like the difference between "dead" and "mostly dead". It isn't much difference in some ways, but huge in its implications.

Anyway, it is at the confluence of the two points that you can get some reasonable milage out of an XP pool mechanic, even with those limits.

If your XP pool is 10,000 XP, and it is divided up among 10 "encounters" roughly evenly, then where it can be useful is giving the DM a rough idea of it being balanced--when the default conditions are met. Ideally, you'd like those default conditions set well away from the extremes--all creatures at once or all 10 groups separate. So say that the default presumption is that you'll have 3-5 encounters, of no more than three of the "encounter groups" at once. If you stick fairly close to the default conditions, you'll get something close to "fair fight" most of the time. If you crowds the creatures into fewer fights, it will be tougher. If you spread them out, it will be easier.

Where I think you are correct is that such a system is going to do a fairly poor job of telling you how much easier or tougher for X amount of crowding or spreading. That is going to depend so much on circumstances, resources, exact party mix, etc. as to make the variables too much to manage. However, that makes such an "adventure budget" system limited, not entirely useless.

What individual groups do about express crowding or grouping is where table preferences need to enter, anyway. Perhaps the amount if fixed, earn it best you can (divide and conquer is a prime goal). Alternately, perhaps easy or hard fights get an XP adjustment. Maybe the DM simply eyeballs it, with an eye towards maintaining the pace the group wants--"Man, that was a little harder than I expected. That puts us just a bit shy of 8th level. So what the heck, just bump 'em on up."

Mark CMG · Mar 19, 2012

No poll = non-negotiable part of the game?

Obviously, since many folks are using various rulesets manage to play fast-moving games everyday, it's a design goal that is attainable. I think we're starting to see core ideas that out of the gate can keep 5E from driving lapsed players away. Now they need to make it better than what lapsed players are already playing. Even something that is better organized and written more accessibly can probably draw those lapsed players in to give it a good chance.

dkyle · Mar 19, 2012

Crazy Jerome said:
If your XP pool is 10,000 XP, and it is divided up among 10 "encounters" roughly evenly, then where it can be useful is giving the DM a rough idea of it being balanced--when the default conditions are met. Ideally, you'd like those default conditions set well away from the extremes--all creatures at once or all 10 groups separate. So say that the default presumption is that you'll have 3-5 encounters, of no more than three of the "encounter groups" at once. If you stick fairly close to the default conditions, you'll get something close to "fair fight" most of the time. If you crowds the creatures into fewer fights, it will be tougher. If you spread them out, it will be easier.

But Mike's stated goal is a system that handles that all-in-one, or separate, just by spreading around Adventure XP. If it ends up being DM judgement if it deviates from a narrow assumption, then it really does nothing of the sort.

Your suggestion is really almost identical to 4E: 3-5 encounters, with some amount of XP per encounter. DMs deviate at their own risk. If you assume a set amount of encounters, per pool of adventure XP, and balance on that assumption, it's really no different than assuming a set amount of XP per encounter, and number of encounters per adventure. The only real difference from 4E being expected Encounters per Adventure instead of expected Encounters per Day. And if Daily resources are going to be as important as it looks like, I don't see that as an improvement at all. It just makes it even harder to predict a party's performance.