Help me get my Shackled City game back on track

[scourger]

I've been running the Shackled City adventure path from Dungeon for about the last 6 months. I feel mired in the second adventure. I need some help to get this camapign back on track.

Here's little background. Our group is all 30-something professionals who have been gaming about 25 years each. Last summer, 2 people quit. The only way I could think to run a D&D game was for each of the 2-3 weekly players to run 2 characters. I figured 1 player would only show up sometimes since he commutes over 1 hour one-way. A nice suprise was that another former member rejoined and attendance has been pretty steady at 4 players = 8 PCs.

To make the game fresh & exciting for me, I required 2 tiers of PCs. Tier 1 is Star Wars human jedi consular or jedi guardain; Judge Dredd human street judge or psi judge; or Omega World pure strain human or mutant human. Tier 2 is any level 1 option, aasimar paladin or any standard PHB race & class combo. Each player has a tier 1 PC and a tier 2 character.

The game has been going very well. I didn't expect this type of cross-genre game to be embraced by the players, but they seem to like it. They were very challenged by the first adventure--nearly a TPK. Only 2 PCs have survived since the very beginning--both judges.

Now, it just feels a little boring. In fairness, I have also realized in retrospect that I get bored as a DM and as a player after about 6 months. In this campaign, I feel like I've now seen the lightsabers & lawgivers in action. Plus, it's taking too long. I want to speed up the adventures without missing out on the feeling of the game.

One idea I've had recently is to incorporate some superhero elements from Villains & Vigilantes (one of my faves from back in the 80s). The 1st scene in the next module is "Hulk Smash!" and feels very appropriate for this idea. But, then it gets into another dungeon crawl, which feels done to death.

Another possible idea is to take it back down to 1 PC per player. This might make the encounters challenging again and let each PC develop a niche. I would like to see how they handle the end of this module before trying that option, though.

For faster play, I have been giving out player maps essentially giving them the dungeon area after capturing a foe or some other role-playing event worthy of reward. But, the dungeon crawls are still--well--at a crawling pace. I have considered shortening the adventure to the climactic parts, but that feels like it would lessen the experience.

Any ideas out there?

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

Are the combats slowing you down? They can really drag on in 3.x edition.

You could have less combats, "hand-wave" some of the minor combats, and/or have combats end immediately with the opponent surrendering to the PCs.

If the players are dragging their feet (e.g, spending 35 minutes trying to decide whether or not to open a door), cut their "debate time" down. Have an NPC open the door and--Yikes! Roll for Initiative time!

You could also cut out part of the dungeon crawl portion--shorten the dungeon and the crawl won't, well, crawl along.

 

[scourger]

It feels like the dungeons are where they really crawl. They explore everything. I'm trying to curtail it, and I think I've been somewhat successful; but it just takes a long time to get through rooms. We have gone for entire 3.5 hour sessions and only gotten trhough a couple of rooms.

The combats feel pretty fast, but there are a lot of combatants. I may allow a portal back to Mega City One to open up so the judges may leave, which would reduce it to 6 PCs.

I don't know. Maybe just a little break will help.

 

[Squire James]

If each combatant takes about 1 minute to do their turn (this seems to be about right, including pauses for banter and such), then an 8 person party fighting a similar number of opponents will need an hour for a 4-round combat. There went 1/3 of your session!

Reduce number of PC's ASAP! Then you can tone down the number of enemies, and "small combats" will take more like 15-20 minutes. Big ones will still take an hour, but that's okay. For now, cut down on the insignificant combats. The Little Guys have run off to the Big Guys for a Safety in Numbers seminar.

 

[scourger]

Yes, reducing the number of PCs is likely the best solution to time management issues; especially when considering the combat time. My concern will remain the fluctuating number of players from week to week. I really came up with the 2 characters per player idea when I thought I would have 2 weekly players regularly with 1 extra player intermittently. I also thought that the first module was a little too hard for a party of 4 1st level D&D characters. I read that here, and it was right since the climactic encounter was nearly a TPK. Now that I have 8 PCs in modules that are more level appropriate, the challenges are almost too easy for them. I also think the lawgivers and lightsabers shift the balance of power toward the PCs. Reducing the overall number of combats and combatants could be a very good solution. I did this in one area where the foes became dynamic and tried to mass attack the PCs. It worked better for that encounter, but they defeated & drove off a bunch of foes with withering high-explosive fire. I thought about it for the current scenario, but it made less sense since the defenders have traps set up as defenses.

Any other ideas about how to "cut to the chase" in these adventures? Is that even really a good idea since the modules flow with information that way?

 

[James Jacobs]

If all the players are still having fun with the game, even though it's taking hours to explore the dungeon, I'd say that the game ain't broke so don't fix it.

Cutting down the number of characters per player to one per player is the best method to speed play. Eliminating random wandering mosnters is another good trick. Finally, if the PCs insist on exploring every room and hall or taking an hour before each door trying to decide on how to prepare for a trap or guard that might or might not be lurking on the other side, it's probably best to not bother with having everyone make Listen, Search, and Spot checks when there's nothing there to see or hear. Eventually, the players should pick up on the concept that there's not treasure hidden in every nook of the dungeon and not every door is trapped. Of coruse, if you take this approach, you should drop some subtle hints to the presence of traps and treasure when they do exist in order to give the PCs a chance to find the stuff.

If none of these tricks seem to be working and the game is really suffereing for the large dungeon crawls, you can eliminate most of the longer dungeon crawl segments from the adventure completely by cutting out all the encounters except for 2-4 of the key encounters in each adventure. You'll need to adjust the XP awards as a result, of course (either by inflating awards for what encounters you DO leave in the game, or by introducing stronger and more aggressive story awards and role-playing awards in the non-dungeon crawl segments of the adventures) so that the PCs will still be of the appropriate level to take on the next adventure in the series.

 

[scourger]

Thanks, James. It's always nice to get a little feedback from people in the industry. I really do like the series so far. I just can't see devoting another 3-4 years to completing it. And with the new adventure path kicking off soon, there may be another thing to add to the list of games I want to run...

 

[Bagpuss]

I'm not surprised the dungeons are a crawl with every player having two very complex characters to run. Things would go quicker with just one character per player, I think you've created a rod for your own back by adding all these weird classes and races myself.

 

[scourger]

I'm not surprised the dungeons are a crawl with every player having two very complex characters to run. Things would go quicker with just one character per player, I think you've created a rod for your own back by adding all these weird classes and races myself.

Both felt very necessary when I conceived the game and have been very fun at times. I'm not sure what direction to take. I think I'll play out this module and take a break to play & think about it. There is no lack of other stuff that I would like to run.