~2 hour adventures?

[urric hammersong]

hey!
Where can I find some adventures for about 2, maybe 3 hours of gaming? or some suggestions to write them?

my gaming group is difficult to gather, so it's really hard to keep a single story, so I thought that short games with no ongoing story could work here.

 

[Kulstor]

I'm a beginner to 3.5 and pathfinder but I have some ideas. Maybe something like how dungeon encounters is, where there is, I think, a bit of rp, outside combat stuff, 1 combat encounter, and some rp afterwards.

Also maybe you can set your campaign within a city. And, or some connected 1 shot adventures, like caravan guards. Each encounter can be a separate rp session, but several of those may happen between the starting point & the destination.

Just a few ideas I had.

 

[Noir le Lotus]

Pathfinder Society scenarios are meant to be played in a 3-4 hr session.

I think you should check them.

 

[IronWolf]

Pathfinder Society scenarios could be good. Some can run in a pretty short time frame or at least by dropping an optional encounter be able to do so.

Also, Kobold Quarterly #17 had a scenario designed to be filler for a 2 hour slot called Ambush in Absalom. It was a fun little adventure when I played it and could certainly fit in a limited time slot.

 

[ahayford]

I echo the pathfinder society modules. I've started running them with some friends over the internet using maptools, and so far they've had a good time. Most of them are people with kids or new to tabletop RPGs. With a group that can only meet for small periods of time, I recommend having one session where all you do is literally make characters. This is particularly important if the people in your group are new to RPGs or are very busy. Generating a character without help is probably the number 1 reason I've had people drop out of RPG groups before they've even started. It can be very intimidating at first. I'd even suggest making some pregens or using paizo's pregens to smooth over the introduction.

 

[gamerprinter]

Rite Publishing has just released Frozen Wind, a one-shot module for five 5th level characters as a free download, as a Halloween promo. It was originally created as a Convention Game demo for Origins. Jonathan McAnulty who wrote it ran it 3 times at Origins, and each time ran about 3.5 hours.

Note Frozen Wind is winter-survivor-horror scenario built for a feudal Japanese horror setting - Kaidan. And its totally FREE.

GP

 

[Steel_Wind]

The First Steps Trilogy, released as an introduction to Pathfinder Society are free and are available at the top of the page here. They each take a little longer to run than 3 hours, however, Pirst Steps 2: To Delve the Dungeon Deep is the shortest of the three if you have the Haunted Dungeon flip-mat to assist you in running the adventure.

We Be Goblins and Master of the Fallen Fortress, the pdfs of which are both free on the Paizo site, might be useful to you and provide more "fun" than the First Steps Trilogy as a one shot adventiure, imo. They will each require at least one encounter to be cut from them -- at a minimum -- to be playable in 2 hours, but you might manage either in three hours. On the plus side, they are free and FUN. If 3 hours is okay? Then I recommend either of these modules as your best bet.

PFS scenarios are a great choice. The scenarios in Season 0 and early in Season 1 tend to be shorter than those presented on late Season 1 and Seasons 2 and 3. Most of them will take at least 3.5 hours to play, however.

There are "delves" that are available to run in 60 minutes slots for PFS as well -- though I find those to be of indifferent quality for the most part. I would not recommend them.

If you really only have 2 hours, you can look into a "Quest" published in Kobold Quarterly. Quests are specifically designed to be played in 90-120 minutes. The only one so far is the short adventure purblished in KQ #17 referred to above by Ironwolf.

Lastly, looking back in the annals of Dungeon, you might also have a look at converting one of the "Side Treks" from the issues of that magazine which were featured in the late 2E era.

If lack of regular and recurring attendance to be able keep up a coherent story from session to session is you main issue (together with scenario length), then PFS is ideally suited for your group. There are a number of home groups which run PFS for precisely this reason. I know of several players in such a home PFS campaign played for this reason and it works very well for them and their needs.

If this is not a one shot but you would like to keep up with PFS as the context in which a series of one shots are run to provide an overall campaign narrative, Pathfinder Society is the ideal solution for your group's needs.

 

[urric hammersong]

Thank you all, this is very useful, I am checking society now, I think it's a great option.