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View Full Version : Running a game in 1-hour sessions?



JenBurdoo
2016-06-11, 12:36 AM
As a teen librarian I've run a DnD-esque campaign on and off for the teens at my workplace, and have just been asked to start it up again. The catch is that I am limited to an hour and a half a week by programs already planned and in the official schedule. I'm not really expecting it to last longer than the summer, though if it does I should be able to obtain more time for it.

The upsides:


The ruleset is Tracy Hickman's XD20 - When I say it's rules-lite, I mean in the sense that you can roll up a character in literally sixty seconds, and combat does not bog the game down.
I have time to plan pretty much whenever I need to.
It's summer, so the kids will be regularly available for feedback and are less likely to miss sessions; we might even get in impromptu sessions.


The downsides:


I'm working with teens; they are fickle and it's hard to get them to commit to a schedule.
One and a half hours isn't much when you consider some will be taken up by making sure everyone is at the table, has supplies, and leaves on time.


I hope to plan and structure each session, but the ruleset enables me to work on the fly in a pinch. It has been a godsend as I am very much a new GM. The "campaign" background is basically a capital city; the party will be members of the "Queen's Own Troubleshooters" and be based at the palace, able to go home every night and be debriefed and assigned a new one-session problem to deal with. With luck I can world-build and have the players take interest in their environment.

BearonVonMu
2016-06-15, 01:31 PM
If it is rules-light, takes no time to generate characters, and has a guild-like structure sending the players on missions, then it has a built-in method for dealing with players coming and going.
The QOT did not assign the player who is absent on this mission.
If a player is gone for good, then either that character is either dead, missing, injured, quit, fired, or some other condition that would take them off of the roster of "Agents available for missions".
What seems to be your question though?

Tanarii
2016-06-15, 01:57 PM
Given the time constraints, IMO your best bet is to hand-wave away how people appear and disappear from the party. Start the game exactly at the start time. If someone walks up to the table late, drop them right into the action. Pack that 90 minutes with action (note: not the same as combat) from start to finish for everyone who is present. No set up time should be required, especially if you're using a light rules set.

Obviously you're going to have to run a certain type of game to make that work. Slow horror build-ups, or in-depth investigation of clues, probably won't work.


The QOT did not assign the player who is absent on this mission.
I agree that mission oriented sessions is a good way to go.

JenBurdoo
2016-06-16, 12:37 AM
The question is mostly about how to handle brief sessions; I ran one Monday, they struggled a bit with the salamander I threw at them, and were in a dire position at the last moment before we had to clean up. Thankfully, two of the PCs ran for it, so I had the injured salamander also break and run; next session will be going after it again, hopefully with more urgency...

I've struggled with timing and pacing for a while; this session worked mostly because when they got confused about how to look for clues, I simply had the nearest building catch fire (since stopping the fires was their job for the day). A bit of railroading there; I intended for them to fight the salamander at some point in the session. As total newbies, they're fine with that and probably don't recognize the concept of railroading -- yet...

With a single hour to do a session, do I perhaps want to devote a given proportion of time to the intro, buildup, climax and denouement? What other methods are there to ensure that each period is self-contained? (A coworker once had a campaign where the players were gladiators, fighting something new every week until they leveled up and escaped.)

Tanarii: I like the "hand-waving" suggestion. Anyone who joins late dashes up to the group, out of breath, wherever they are in the city, and reports that the Captain sent them as reinforcements. While anyone who leaves is abruptly cut off from the party by a collapsing building, or thrown against a wall and knocked out by the monster of the week.