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The short adventure fallacy / Prison of the Hated Pretender play report
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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6676127" data-attributes="member: 22424"><p>Having read through your play-session recap, it looks to me like your issue is less that you have too much material, and more that you need to play in a more time-efficient manner.</p><p></p><p>I would offer two key lessons from the adventure.</p><p></p><p>Lesson One is simply Hofstadter's Law: It <em>always</em> takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>Lesson Two is that when time is short, <em>everything</em> that you do should contribute to your goals.</p><p></p><p>So, if your goal is "finish the adventure", everything you do needs to contribute to that. (Of course, if you consider it more fun to do lots of character-stuff, that's perfectly fine too. But you should probably accept that you won't finish the adventure.)</p><p></p><p>One other thing that jumped out at my very clearly was that you blamed the pre-gen 'short' adventure for a lot of your troubles. The problem here is that most adventures, including short adventures, don't automatically assume you want to one-shot them. And even those that do generally assume a 4-hour session. 2.5 hours is <em>very</em> short, so you <em>will</em> have to adapt the adventure accordingly. (And the designers <em>can't</em> do that for you, because they can't know the constraints you'll be under.)</p><p></p><p>For instance, all that stuff you describe before the PCs head into the dungeon, and especially the time spent in the village: in campaign play, that's all good stuff. In a <em>one-shot</em>, however, that's absolutely poisonous. Unless going to the village takes the PCs closer to completing the adventure (perhaps by allowing them to skip some encounters), it needs to go. And I don't simply mean "discourage the PCs from going there" - I mean "remove the village entirely." If you give the PCs a choice, even a bad choice, you have to expect they'll spend time at least considering it - but they can't choose whether or not to go to a village that isn't there! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>The other big issue I think you have is that the players are taking a long time coming to decisions. Again, in campaign play that's fine. But in a one-shot, you need to press them to make a decision. Don't simply let them sit for ages deciding whether to go left of right - push them for a choice!</p><p></p><p>And that's especially true of the decision whether to enter the dungeon in the first place or not. "There might be treasure in there," is already a weak reason to go in, and when faced with obvious danger, that's only more true. So give them a strong reason why they <em>have</em> to go in, and why they have to do so <em>right now</em>. "Your son is missing and was last seen heading this way", or something. (And ignore that little voice that says, "that's railroading". Yes, it is. But for a one-shot, <em>it is perfectly acceptable to railroad the PCs into the adventure</em>.)</p><p></p><p>Beyond that, it does sound like the adventure itself was pretty unfocussed for one-shot play - there are at least three levels, and no obvious context to allow the PCs to choose which to take.</p><p></p><p>The thing is, any dungeon adventure can be drawn out as a node diagram showing all the paths that can be taken - encounter A can lead to encounter B or to encounter C, encounter B always leads to D... and so on. For a one-shot, you need to keep the number of nodes quite small, and also the path from "start" to "BBEG" pretty short - I would normally go for 6 nodes, with at most 4 being required to complete. That still allows some scope for PC choices, but at least gives them a chance to get to the end.</p><p></p><p>I would bet that this pre-gen adventure had rather more paths than that, including paths that simply led nowhere towards the end goal. Those dead-ends should be removed from the adventure for the one-shot - again, simply don't let the PCs waste time deciding whether to take that dead-end or not.</p><p></p><p>I hope some of that helps, at least a little.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="delericho, post: 6676127, member: 22424"] Having read through your play-session recap, it looks to me like your issue is less that you have too much material, and more that you need to play in a more time-efficient manner. I would offer two key lessons from the adventure. Lesson One is simply Hofstadter's Law: It [i]always[/i] takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. :) Lesson Two is that when time is short, [i]everything[/i] that you do should contribute to your goals. So, if your goal is "finish the adventure", everything you do needs to contribute to that. (Of course, if you consider it more fun to do lots of character-stuff, that's perfectly fine too. But you should probably accept that you won't finish the adventure.) One other thing that jumped out at my very clearly was that you blamed the pre-gen 'short' adventure for a lot of your troubles. The problem here is that most adventures, including short adventures, don't automatically assume you want to one-shot them. And even those that do generally assume a 4-hour session. 2.5 hours is [i]very[/i] short, so you [i]will[/i] have to adapt the adventure accordingly. (And the designers [i]can't[/i] do that for you, because they can't know the constraints you'll be under.) For instance, all that stuff you describe before the PCs head into the dungeon, and especially the time spent in the village: in campaign play, that's all good stuff. In a [i]one-shot[/i], however, that's absolutely poisonous. Unless going to the village takes the PCs closer to completing the adventure (perhaps by allowing them to skip some encounters), it needs to go. And I don't simply mean "discourage the PCs from going there" - I mean "remove the village entirely." If you give the PCs a choice, even a bad choice, you have to expect they'll spend time at least considering it - but they can't choose whether or not to go to a village that isn't there! :) The other big issue I think you have is that the players are taking a long time coming to decisions. Again, in campaign play that's fine. But in a one-shot, you need to press them to make a decision. Don't simply let them sit for ages deciding whether to go left of right - push them for a choice! And that's especially true of the decision whether to enter the dungeon in the first place or not. "There might be treasure in there," is already a weak reason to go in, and when faced with obvious danger, that's only more true. So give them a strong reason why they [i]have[/i] to go in, and why they have to do so [i]right now[/i]. "Your son is missing and was last seen heading this way", or something. (And ignore that little voice that says, "that's railroading". Yes, it is. But for a one-shot, [i]it is perfectly acceptable to railroad the PCs into the adventure[/i].) Beyond that, it does sound like the adventure itself was pretty unfocussed for one-shot play - there are at least three levels, and no obvious context to allow the PCs to choose which to take. The thing is, any dungeon adventure can be drawn out as a node diagram showing all the paths that can be taken - encounter A can lead to encounter B or to encounter C, encounter B always leads to D... and so on. For a one-shot, you need to keep the number of nodes quite small, and also the path from "start" to "BBEG" pretty short - I would normally go for 6 nodes, with at most 4 being required to complete. That still allows some scope for PC choices, but at least gives them a chance to get to the end. I would bet that this pre-gen adventure had rather more paths than that, including paths that simply led nowhere towards the end goal. Those dead-ends should be removed from the adventure for the one-shot - again, simply don't let the PCs waste time deciding whether to take that dead-end or not. I hope some of that helps, at least a little. [/QUOTE]
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