D&D General Adventuring Temp Agency

[plisnithus8]

Hoping to get enough interest for a weekly D&D at work this summer during the lunch hour (plus a little extra as people are able), I decided to send an invite to all 18 of my co-workers. I'm overwhelmed with the response -- Ten have accepted to come to session zero with a couple more tentative -- 3 have played with me outside of work, 3 have played some type of rpg at least once, and 4 have never played and are coming in knowing absolutely nothing.

We'll do session zero Tuesday and have 2 hours set aside for this and use that time to talk about scheduling too. It's going to be even more tricky because I already have the seasoned players telling me ideas for what they want to play. I sent out some links to a Gini D how-to-play video and the DNDBeyond character creator. but I know some people won't look at anything until they come. I'll have each newbie sit next to someone with more experience; they're all helpful people so I'm counting on that so I don't have to do all the work teaching.

I don't think all 10 will show up weekly but have to be prepared if they do. I've DMed 10 before but not for long (I asked a player to DM half the group when we had large number show up -- splitting then party). People will be getting lunch and eating so that will slow things down so I'll have to get things started right away each session. We'll have to have minimal and quick combat.

I've decided to make the sessions episodic so people can join each week as they are able and to make the set-up be that they are a cohort who all just graduated from a community college in Waterdeep with debt in an over-saturated job market so they join a temp agency. I'm creating a job board with a dozen or clients looking for temps. The session will be relatively short so will have to be mini-one-shots -- I'll mostly pull from previous adventures I've run to cut down on prep because I run another weekly home-brew game once a week with other people.

Temp job ideas include:

• Thorin & Company: steal dragon horde
• Acquisitions Inc.: dungeon crawl
• Harpers: undercover musicians
• Xanathar's Guild: thugs
• Spelljammer Academy: ship repossession

Questions, comments, suggestions welcome.
If there's interest, I'll post updates.

 

[payn]

Is any of this Adventurers League stuff? Could be a good spot to mine if not.

 

[aco175]

1 hour lunch seems like it cannot do much. 10 minutes to get and 5 to eat leaving less focus to play and meeting going late and some moving around. Sounds like you have a plan though for the sporadic numbers.

I'm trying to think about what you cut out of the game to make time. Making combat easier does make sense and maybe this leads to limiting some spells or eliminating them. Maybe some things like multiclassing should be cut and some classes or abilities seem like they would take a lot of time to play.

How many encounters/scenes can one get through in an hour. I'm guessing 5 min. lead in, 10 min. exploration with maybe a puzzle or riddle or something- even a bard music-riff, and one combat. Sounds like it would at least be cool to try and maybe some will be a good core group to schedule a weekly game at some point.

 

[plisnithus8]

I say an hour with a little extra — I think most people can stretch it to 2 hours with a more relaxed summer schedule

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Headline pitch is awesome, my mind immediately thought about what it's like to be a temp. You always want the permanent job. I wonder what that would be? Maybe the court magician, sergeant in the guard, ordained priest in the church, department head at thieves guild, etc

Perhaps after three months of game time, each PC gets their performance review... But somehow make it fun, and not very much like real work and the stress a real performance review brings...

 

[plisnithus8]

Perhaps after three months of game time, each PC gets their performance review... But somehow make it fun, and not very much like real work and the stress a real performance review brings...

Yeah, maybe I'll just pop in each of their IRL offices between sessions and close the door -- "How would you rate your overall performance?"

 

[bedir than]

Temp job ideas include:

• Thorin & Company: steal dragon horde
• Acquisitions Inc.: dungeon crawl
• Harpers: undercover musicians
• Xanathar's Guild: thugs
• Spelljammer Academy: ship repossession

Post office: You must deliver a special item/person
Beastie Boys: Sabotage a rival base
Tower defense: Defend what the military abandoned

 

[Koloth]

Have a good plan on recording what/where every character is when you have to pause. It is almost inevitable that play will have to stop mid combat or mid negotiations due to some urgent work meeting or such or just lunch time running out. Being able to restore to that check point quickly will be important. Otherwise a session will go something like "Ok, we are finally ready to resume play! What do you mean time is up!" Be able to deal with PC 3 and 5 being missing from the resumed session because reasons and PC 2 and 4 being gone the following session.

Have several sets of loaner dice. And other basic playing supplies. If there is a FLGS in walking distance, maybe spend one session going there and introduce the new folks to the wonders of a game store. Or suggest an after work/weekend meetup there.

For the first few sessions, keep the character types fairly simple. Maybe limit to the basic Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling critters with Fighter, Rogue and Wizard as the class choices. Too many variations may confuse the new folks. Maybe keep it to what they saw in the LOTR and Hobbit movies. Expand to other options once they get the basics down.

Good idea on trying to expand the hobby.

 

[Sorinth]

One suggestion to speed up combat is to use theatre of the mind or a gridless battlemap and just be lenient with letting players get where they want to go and do what they want.

Also the initiative variants can also help speed up combat, side initiative is probably the best for your use case of potentially a lot of players including some newbies. The more you can overlap the decision paralysis of what should I do on my turn the better.