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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8080686" data-attributes="member: 177">There's short mysteries, and long mysteries.  Short mysteries are done in a session or three.  You design so that the PCs who start the adventure can already take on whatever is at the end, and don't plan to have them level up several times in the middle.  How quickly they get through it is mostly an issue of when you have to create the next adventure.Long mysteries (like I assume Dragon Heist is supposed to be) are another matter.  There's some BBEGs at the end, and if the characters don't do enough stuff before they reach the end, they get squished.  I've used two different management techniques.  0) Slight metagame - "Dudes, you are playing through a module.  If you get to the end too quickly, you will get toasted.  Take your time and do some of the side-quests too, please."  Some groups are fine with being outright told about the pacing, others are not.  Know your players.1)Telegraph the fact that the villain is far too powerful for them to take on at this time.  How they choose to manage that is their problem - maybe cleaning up some of the smaller tasks along the way will seem more reasonable.While it wasn't a mystery, my run through of Dragon of Ice Spire Peak went this way.  The first day in the area, the 1st level PCs saw a dragon in the sky in the distance.  The fact that we'd eventually deal with it was obvious.  The fact that it would simply eat us if we went up to kill it then was also obvious.  2) Use milestone leveling, where the milestones are set at appropriate way points on the path(s) to the villain.</blockquote>

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