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The short adventure fallacy / Prison of the Hated Pretender play report
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<blockquote data-quote="N'raac" data-source="post: 6676176" data-attributes="member: 6681948"><p>When I think "one shot", I'm lead to "tournament adventure", which covers off a lot of what delericho notes above. So what are the hallmarks of tournament play that make it possible, though not certain, we'll get finished in 4 hours? Train of thought rambling ahead:</p><p></p><p>Well, characters are typically pregenerated, have built in hooks to the adventure and relations to one another, have abilities (eg, spell, magic items, etc.) selected for certain challenges in the adventure, and avoiding those that would derail the adventure. </p><p></p><p>The adventure typically starts with backstory provided, so we're not travelling along and fin something we may or may not want to investigate, with a few choices in how to do so. That happened before the players sat down, so here's the backstory. In the OP example, you have some reason to explore the Prison and you are standing at the entry point. There's no reason to go back to town, keep going on our journey, etc. Those choices were made before we sat down to play.</p><p></p><p>Then we move to the node issue delericho provided, and we probably have some issue of urgency/time.</p><p></p><p>I'm thinking back to those old TSR Tournament modules. The characters have fallen into an ancient pyramid, the air is bad and they have limited time to get out before they suffocate. The characters have, by various crimes, been "sentenced" to explore the dungeon and bring back the Holy McGuffin, or die in the trying. The characters are shipwrecked with no supplies, but here's an entrance to some weird old wizard's home. </p><p></p><p>Many of the modules had additional trappings added on to add more "how the characters meet", "how the characters become involved", "how the characters find and travel to the adventure location" and just more "adventure location", but that wasn't part of the one shot - it would be a distraction. The Slave Lords started out as a series of tournament scenarios and in each successive publication, was fleshed out more. But the original, 4 little module A1 to A4 series included some indications of how the tournaments/ one-shots worked. One or two had shaded areas on the map which represented areas that were not in the tournament. As I recall, Module A3 had two nine room linear dungeons, each of which had been one round/one shot of tournament play. Each encounter was faced one after the other, with no potential for retreat, rest, choosing which door, etc. etc. A4 began with the PC's imprisoned, stripped of gear, stripped of most or all spells, and freed by a rumbling earthquake. Find your way off the island before the volcano explodes or die. "What if the players rest to regain spells?" Well. after a few hours, they are wakened by an earth tremor, so they don't get enough rest to regain spells and now they have less time to find their way off the island. [Seriously, there's a smoking volcano, earth tremors and an island swarming with the guys who were imprisoning you, and you lie down to take a nap???] </p><p></p><p>One shots are different from ongoing campaigns. If you want the adventure to take 4, or 2.5, hours, then you need only 4, or 2.5, hours of material, not 10 or 20 hours of potential material and the hope the players will zone right in on what's important to complete the adventure. And, as delericho notes above, no sidebars - if it's not part of the steps in resolving the very limited goal of the adventure, cut it. That basement level with lots of flavour and interesting combat and non-combat encounters that add to the ambience, but aren't essential to the main plot? There is no basement, or the basement has collapsed and it is inaccessible.</p><p></p><p>This necessitates some railroading. If we plan on, say, eight encounters, each requiring half an hour or so to fill a four hour session, there can't be a potential for the players to instead have 16 half hour encounters (as belaboured above), and there also can't be the potential to skip past five of the encounters and finish the adventure in 90 minutes. The adventure needs to be scripted to some extent in order to fit the desired timeframe. Much more rigid than typical campaign play, much less sandbox campaign play.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="N'raac, post: 6676176, member: 6681948"] When I think "one shot", I'm lead to "tournament adventure", which covers off a lot of what delericho notes above. So what are the hallmarks of tournament play that make it possible, though not certain, we'll get finished in 4 hours? Train of thought rambling ahead: Well, characters are typically pregenerated, have built in hooks to the adventure and relations to one another, have abilities (eg, spell, magic items, etc.) selected for certain challenges in the adventure, and avoiding those that would derail the adventure. The adventure typically starts with backstory provided, so we're not travelling along and fin something we may or may not want to investigate, with a few choices in how to do so. That happened before the players sat down, so here's the backstory. In the OP example, you have some reason to explore the Prison and you are standing at the entry point. There's no reason to go back to town, keep going on our journey, etc. Those choices were made before we sat down to play. Then we move to the node issue delericho provided, and we probably have some issue of urgency/time. I'm thinking back to those old TSR Tournament modules. The characters have fallen into an ancient pyramid, the air is bad and they have limited time to get out before they suffocate. The characters have, by various crimes, been "sentenced" to explore the dungeon and bring back the Holy McGuffin, or die in the trying. The characters are shipwrecked with no supplies, but here's an entrance to some weird old wizard's home. Many of the modules had additional trappings added on to add more "how the characters meet", "how the characters become involved", "how the characters find and travel to the adventure location" and just more "adventure location", but that wasn't part of the one shot - it would be a distraction. The Slave Lords started out as a series of tournament scenarios and in each successive publication, was fleshed out more. But the original, 4 little module A1 to A4 series included some indications of how the tournaments/ one-shots worked. One or two had shaded areas on the map which represented areas that were not in the tournament. As I recall, Module A3 had two nine room linear dungeons, each of which had been one round/one shot of tournament play. Each encounter was faced one after the other, with no potential for retreat, rest, choosing which door, etc. etc. A4 began with the PC's imprisoned, stripped of gear, stripped of most or all spells, and freed by a rumbling earthquake. Find your way off the island before the volcano explodes or die. "What if the players rest to regain spells?" Well. after a few hours, they are wakened by an earth tremor, so they don't get enough rest to regain spells and now they have less time to find their way off the island. [Seriously, there's a smoking volcano, earth tremors and an island swarming with the guys who were imprisoning you, and you lie down to take a nap???] One shots are different from ongoing campaigns. If you want the adventure to take 4, or 2.5, hours, then you need only 4, or 2.5, hours of material, not 10 or 20 hours of potential material and the hope the players will zone right in on what's important to complete the adventure. And, as delericho notes above, no sidebars - if it's not part of the steps in resolving the very limited goal of the adventure, cut it. That basement level with lots of flavour and interesting combat and non-combat encounters that add to the ambience, but aren't essential to the main plot? There is no basement, or the basement has collapsed and it is inaccessible. This necessitates some railroading. If we plan on, say, eight encounters, each requiring half an hour or so to fill a four hour session, there can't be a potential for the players to instead have 16 half hour encounters (as belaboured above), and there also can't be the potential to skip past five of the encounters and finish the adventure in 90 minutes. The adventure needs to be scripted to some extent in order to fit the desired timeframe. Much more rigid than typical campaign play, much less sandbox campaign play. [/QUOTE]
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