High School Lunch Time

[Eradis]

I am thinking, and still pretty unsure if I want to, about offering the possibilities to some teenagers at the school I work at to play D&D during lunch time one to two times per nine days cycle. School schedule being what it is, that would leave a window of about 45 minutes to actually play during lunch time. I am not certain how I could manage to introduce the game the kids in said amount of time, especially if I have high attendance.

Any clues on what formula I could try? I fear a different system would be better suited, but the classic might get more people.

[nickl_2000]

So, my suggestion would be for you to do a sign up for the first few times, this will limit the response to a level you can handle. Have pre-made characters set up that a player can pick up and play with, which will make it faster to begin with. Once you get some players who are more experienced then they can create their own characters and help other create them outside of the play time or they can be the DMs and you move to a roll of assisting the games instead of running them.


Playtime becomes a different issue, and the game would work better as a homebrew campaign where it has more of a social aspect than a combat based. But if you are going to do combat then keep it lower level for awhile so that the combat goes much faster.

[Vogie]

I second using (or at least having the option of) premade characters, and I'd would keep the levels artificially low to keep it going at a decent pace.

I'd suggest:

Limiting or removing resurrection mechanics altogether.
Stealing the retirement mechanic from Gloomhaven, so each character creation includes a set of quest-esque circumstances, at which time that PC retires happily and is removed from the table.
Look up information about the West Marches styles of play, which allows players to move in & out of the storyline simply.

[Eradis]

Good advice.

1. Breaking it small and opening for potential Game Master could actually be a good idea. Putting a sign-up list for Players and one for Game Master (without making them exclusive) would help me get started.

2. I do like the retirement feature in a D&D setting. I'm not sure how I would implement such a thing and not put it as tedious as in Gloomhaven.

3. Never intended on using resurrection. Even in my campaigns with my friends I tend to just go on. If a player wants to change his character anyway I usually allow it and either make the former die or retire for X reasons depending on the position they are in the story-arc.

4. Not much time on my hands these following days, but I will check the West Marches style of play. Is it common, based on another system or what else?

[Vogie]

Is it common, based on another system or what else?

It's a specific style of D&D, (although it could be played with most systems) originally made for large groups of DMs and Players who can't decide on a time or times due to life (tm), and is loosely based on the concept of a large caravan going into the "unexplored West". Sometimes these 3 people scout ahead, sometimes those 5 people go hunting, sometimes these 7 people wander over to those ruins over there, and sometimes there is overlap between those groups.

You can also use the concept for:

Diablo-style megadungeon crawlers
Risk-esque map conquering sprees
MMO-Style "build the town" quests
Star-Trekkie/SG:U-style exploration adventures

[NecessaryWeevil]

I was curious myself, so I went looking. Here (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/78/grand-experiments-west-marches/) is a link to a detailed description by the original West Marches DM himself.