ZEITGEIST How can I make Zeitgeist lighter / faster?

In June 2015 I started running a Zeitgeist campaign using 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. Today, nearly 2 years later, we are only in the early chapters of adventure 3. We play at maximum 2 times per month, 4th edition isn't the fastest system for combat resolution, and the Zeitgeist adventure path contains a great amount of story to tell. So we just finished the "Kaja and her Toys" encounter, I'm preparing the next session, and I'm reading the encounter "Mangled Golem". And at this point something in my head clicks and says: Why am I preparing a puzzle encounter in adventure 3 which only serves to prepare events for adventure 5, which for my group is probably another year or two ahead? The story of each single adventure is already so complex that my players have difficulties to remember all the stuff I told them about the adventure they are currently in. By the time I'm in adventure 5, they will certainly have forgotten this encounter in adventure 3. And right now it only serves as a distraction, an "unsolved mystery" as the text suggests, that risks the players spending valuable time on something that doesn't advance the current adventure.

I must admit I haven't read further than adventure 3 yet, because the whole campaign is something like 1,600 pages. But I am wondering whether there isn't a way to lighten up the campaign. To simplify the story of each adventure for a shorter, more streamlined experience in which the players are more occupied with what is currently going on than with what will happen years in the future. But I don't want to scratch the overall campaign story either, just keep it a bit more in the background. How did you guys handle this when playing the Zeitgeist campaign?

I'm suffering from a similar problem for different reasons: although my group games much faster, the publication schedule meant we had to insert buffer adventures (complicating things even further) and ulterior factors meant we ended up having a three-year break. All that lovely complexity and careful foreshadowing has probably gone to waste as I have to remind my players who everybody is!

My advice would be to switch systems. That's what I did. Although I love 4E, and the Zeitgeist team have done a great job maximising the strengths of that system (how I would have loved to reach epic tier and use the stats for the fey titans as written) 4E is indeed very slow when it comes to set pieces. I would not have contemplated starting the campaign up again if an alternative hadn't presented itself:

We're using the Cypher System. I can set a level for an NPC and then just read the words of each power from the 4E stat block and voila: system conversion. If you're anal about crunch (please forgive that expression) by all means type up all the stat blocks, but I think that's a waste of time.

Combats can be complex, and varied, but the maths don't slow things down and each person has one action or a move on their turn, just like 3e. Bish bash bosh.

If a system change is out of the question, pare things down:

That golem episode can be introduced as background colour, without involving the PCs too much. Some encounters can be cut entirely, or solved with dialogue instead of combat. I'd hate to do this myself, but if it's causing the campaign to drag, stick to the main storyline.

In adventure #4, cut everything apart from the main quest. Get rid of Griento (or manage his problem in a different way); have Mr Mapple appear as a background detail and rescue Isobel Travers himself. Forget the monster hunt.

In adventure #5, have the players go after Kell, then straight on to the Cauldron Hill facility. Cut ekossigan and the eschatologists, or have them appear as background, being dealt with off-stage by other officers.

In adventure #6, you could have Tinker appear at the end of Act One, blow himself up, and skip to Act Two.

In adventure #7... well, you get the idea.

Well, if I ever play this campaign again, I'll use the 5th edition D&D system that is currently being published via EN5ider. However there I have your problem: The publication schedule means I won't have 5E material available for another year or so before I could even begin a campaign.

Thank you for the hints on what parts to cut in the coming adventures. I think for my session I will do as you suggested and give the golem no more than a 5-minute mention during their daily briefing. I think I'll also be a bit more blunt with hints where to go next, as getting from Kaja to Xambria to the dig site in the adventure "as written" might involve too much of the players stumbling around in the dark.

Depending on how adaptable your group is, you could try letting them read the story of how the golem came to be where it is. I sent my group this to read before we started adventure 3. When the golem was discovered, they already had the mysterious story to explain how it got there, and I was able to say that the party's spirit medium pieced the images together by touching each individual fragment of the golem. The golem was much more memorable that way.

We're playing this using PF rules, which my players are having a difficult time with, because they play RPG's very rarely. So no matter which rule system, wouldn't make a difference I think. Anyway, in order to reduce time and complexity of the campaign, I remove encounters from the game. If an encounter does not move the story forward, it goes. There's quite a few of these "fillers" in the campaign and that seems to work quite well. When the encounter is a must-have, I sometimes reduce it to throwing a single die for resolution.

Since we only play every other month or so, I use Slack to track a log of campaign events, which the players frequently use to look up past happenings. Also the face cards are a big help, because the visual aid helps them remember NPCs more easily. I think it also helps that this is the only campaign the players are involved in, so they don't confuse story lines.

gideonpepys said:

We're using the Cypher System. I can set a level for an NPC and then just read the words of each power from the 4E stat block and voila: system conversion.

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If I may hijack this thread for a specific question... My own campaing is in ongoing two-year break, partly due to the same problem of 4e being quite slow, especially in complex battle encounters. I glanced through Cypher System and I'm liking what I see, but how do you enforce the limit on a number of cyphers players can carry? Inability to carry more than two potions at a time seems quite counter-intuitive, especially when there's no hard limit on a number of magic items as whole.

hirou said:

If I may hijack this thread for a specific question... My own campaing is in ongoing two-year break, partly due to the same problem of 4e being quite slow, especially in complex battle encounters. I glanced through Cypher System and I'm liking what I see, but how do you enforce the limit on a number of cyphers players can carry? Inability to carry more than two potions at a time seems quite counter-intuitive, especially when there's no hard limit on a number of magic items as whole.

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This will take a longer answer than I have time for right now, and I was thinking about adding some comments about this to our campaign thread anyway, so rather than hijacking this one, that's what I'll do: some observations on transferring to the Cypher System to follow (as soon as I am able) in the Continuing Adventures of Korrigan & Co...

Why can you only wear two magic rings in D&D?

The first RPG I ever played, Talislanta, had a fascination with the number seven. And if a given person or object ever had seven more more active magical effects or magic items, the magic on all of them would be suppressed.

If you want to get metaphysical, potions aren't just physical fluids; they're aetheric substrates, and if more than two of them are on the same entity (which is also an aetheric substrate, albeit one that resonates on a different harmonious sphere), their essences mix and yield random and usually destructive results once consumed.

RangerWickett said:

Why can you only wear two magic rings in D&D?

The first RPG I ever played, Talislanta, had a fascination with the number seven. And if a given person or object ever had seven more more active magical effects or magic items, the magic on all of them would be suppressed.

If you want to get metaphysical, potions aren't just physical fluids; they're aetheric substrates, and if more than two of them are on the same entity (which is also an aetheric substrate, albeit one that resonates on a different harmonious sphere), their essences mix and yield random and usually destructive results once consumed.

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This.

Oh, and this: Cyphers are only at the core of the cypher system because Monte says they are. They can work like ordinary one-use items if you want them to. But I prefer to use them like RangerWickett suggested.