D&D 5E Help me run a 90 min D&D 1-shot for 8 Girl Guides!

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Realistically, whatever is run, it isn't going to be finished.

I totally disagree. It's completely possible to land a 90 minute adventure. But that starts with not sabotaging the effort by saying "OK, we're going to run Tomb of Annihilation in 90 minutes, kids."

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Ancillary issues, which probably could be answered more fully based on what you're comfortable sharing:

The immediate question that came to my mind was: did you have enough dice for eight? I don't! But I see you have that in hand.

Is the 90 minutes actually 90 minutes of game play, or more a block of time wherein everyone arrives, will want to talk some and so on, and possibly during? Will you have a break for a few minutes?

Definitely concur running a lite version of mechanics, based on whatever you decide to include in scene. If the purpose is to introduce D&D, may want to use the terminology from that system at least for their side. If it will be faster or more efficient to prepare for you by using an alternate system like Shadowdark as some suggested, then keep all that on the player-facing side.

Be kind, and set modest goals for yourself!

Yeah, it’s best that we don’t talk about how much dice I have. Suffice to say I have enough.

As for the 90 minutes, you’re right in that it’s likely to be more like 80 minutes.

Even though I’m likely to run D&D, just due to my familiarity, I’ll likely keep much of the mechanics on my side. Let the girls focus on just playing a character.

And yeah, I’m trying to be kind to myself and set modest goals. I’m aiming for not a complete train wreck, just a partial one!

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I totally disagree. It's completely possible to land a 90 minute adventure. But that starts with not sabotaging the effort by saying "OK, we're going to run Tomb of Annihilation in 90 minutes, kids."

Technically I could run ToA in 90 minutes. I’m sure I could opening scene TPK in under 30 minutes!

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Session is run and done and it wasn’t a train wreck, so I’m calling it a success. I even dealt with the added unexpected hurdle of one of the girls rocking up with a 2nd level winged Centaur Druid.

I wish I was kidding, but I am not. The rest of the girls had 1st level pre-gens I made.

She had a printed mini of her PC, so clearly invested in it. I just wish I had a bit of a heads up, so I could prepare accordingly, but I rolled with it easily enough. Only Str 12, so I said she wasn’t strong enough to fly around with any of the other PCs.

After looking at various adventures I owned and some online, I decided they were all too complex for a 90 minute session. So instead I used Chat GPT to get an outline of a simple wilderness adventure that I then built off of.

It required a bit of tweaking to get what I wanted, but much faster than writing it all from scratch myself. Plus it was quite good at providing multiple ways to solve the encounters.

That came in handy as options I could suggest to the girls to help overcome their analysis paralysis.

The adventure was very simple. They lived in a village near a forest. The village had a crystal that kept them warm and protected, which was stolen by a fey. If they didn’t get the crystal back before sunset their town would freeze over and an eternal winter would begin.

So most of the adventure was tracking down the fey and overcoming various obstacles and problems (via skill challenges) along the way. There was potential for combat, but they avoided it.

They tried to steal the crystal back off the fey when they caught up with it, with half the party performing an act to distract the fey, but the rogue flubbed their sleight of hand roll, so they ended up persuading the fey that the village needed the crystal to survive instead.

Overall it wasn’t the greatest session I’ve ever run, and some of the girls looked a bit lost and unsure what to do, even with heavy prompting, but we completed it within about 85 minutes with no major issues, so I’m calling it a win!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I guarantee that girl has drawn a ton of pictures of her winged centaur PC. Good job rolling with that punch.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I guarantee that girl has drawn a ton of pictures of her winged centaur PC. Good job rolling with that punch.

Yeah, I don't doubt that at all.

I asked my daughters about her on the drive home last night. Apparently she’s horse obsessed, so makes sense she wanted to play a centaur.

She paid a lot of attention in game to what was going on and was the most proactive, so I didn’t mind.

My initial concern was her stealing the spotlight by being able to do much more than the other characters, but it wasn’t an issue.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You know, given the overlap of horse girls with general geekiness, D&D probably ought to have some explicit support for them. If not in an official book, an all in one third party PDF (reasonably priced for kids) is a good idea.

Centaur is probably covered already by WotC, but maybe there's room for another ancestry.

A few horsey subclasses, some horsey spells, some way to have a horse-themed familiar (maybe a tiny pegasus?) and some horse treasures and not-for-killing monster write-ups.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

You know, given the overlap of horse girls with general geekiness, D&D probably ought to have some explicit support for them. If not in an official book, an all in one third party PDF (reasonably priced for kids) is a good idea.

Centaur is probably covered already by WotC, but maybe there's room for another ancestry.

A few horsey subclasses, some horsey spells, some way to have a horse-themed familiar (maybe a tiny pegasus?) and some horse treasures and not-for-killing monster write-ups.

All I can think of now is Bojack Horseman in a D&D campaign!

 

[mikeburke]

All I can think of now is Bojack Horseman in a D&D campaign!

I was about to post a link to the My Little Pony RPG.. but then I realized I still have a scrap of dignity..

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If ha'ponies were a PC specie in 5e..

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