D&D 5E 5e Convention game recommendations

[MarkB]

I'm heading off to an RPG convention next week, and after initially having planned to just visit for the weekend and play a few games, I'm now unexpectedly able to make it for the full 4+ days, and will have time to run at least one or two games. Trouble is, I'm all out of time to write up anything myself at this point.

Can anyone recommend a 5e scenario or two (preferably freely available) that could be run comfortably within a 4-hour convention slot? I only have access to the PH and the Starter Set at present, though I'm hoping to pick up the MM and DMG at the con, so I'm preferably looking for scenarios which don't require anything from the MM.

 

[Mark CMG]

Just run two of the five sections of the Starter Set as scenarios. The early two if you want to use the pregen characters that come with it as is.

Have fun at the convention, buddy!

 

[MarkB]

Just run two of the five sections of the Starter Set as scenarios. The early two if you want to use the pregen characters that come with it as is.

Thanks - that was going to be my "plan B", and is honestly probably my best option, as I am at least familiar with the content.

Have fun at the convention, buddy!

I plan to.

 

[ccooke]

I should write up the convention game I ran a couple of years ago (at the Discworld Convention 2012, as it happened) using the 5e playtest. That was a longish game (somewhere around six to eight hours, I think) and I knew that some of the players would not be able to be there for the whole thing. It was also run in the bar, so sometimes people would go to order food and drink.

I had a small scenario where the party met in the traditional cliche inn late at night, somewhere on the more isolated reaches of a major trade route. Add some oddities: the top floor of the inn has been hired by a group of travellers, but all the stairs to it seem to have vanished.
Whenever anyone leaves the group, turn to everyone still there and say: "The person that left was never here. You have no recollection of them whatsoever. Anything they did in the past stays done - you presume that someone else must have done it. Possibly yourselves."
If anyone comes back or joins the group part-way through: "That person has been present all the time. You have clear memories of them being here". For those who left the game previously (and thus ceased to exist) all memories of them being present are fully restored.

The players are told that their character don't notice anything strange - until things start to contradict in play. It doesn't take long (and a couple of fights with some cultists and their guards) for causality to be frayed quite a bit just by people going to buy drinks, let alone when someone vanishes for an hour and comes back. The tipping point for the group I ran through this was when the entire party present had distinct and contradictory memories of two different people tying up a prisoner, unaided. Once the characters compare notes it's clear that something strange is happening, once they were aware, I started having them notice that the inn was changing randomly whenever they weren't looking at it. Anything not being observed was likely to change slightly by this point.

Eventually they find a way up to the top floor and beat some cultists and other nasties before they can complete a rather unpleasant ritual.

It's a really fun scenario and, as far as I can see, it's only possible to run it in an environment like a convention bar. Which is a shame, because I don't get to run games in those very often