The Gaming Den

One hour? Fuck no! Playing a stupid board game can last somewhere between 20minutes and an hour, but that's because of the limit of a child's attention span. As an adult, I want to put off whole evenings just to mess around as a giant frog, dong snake, hat making dorf wizard, elven deku nut flinging savage, iron clad pudding knight, or emo dragon-fairy.

hogarth wrote:D&D adventures should be one hour long.

What? A game of Arkham Horror is several hours long! Even a game of Elder Sign is over an hour! How is D&D supposed to be shorter than that?

What we're seeing is the natural progression of their unfortunate "Lunch Break Campaigns". Since quite a while before 4e came out, the designers at WotC have been doing this thing where they write and work and then "playtest" their ideas by running a D&D game on their lunchbreaks. This is why everything to come out of their office in the last four years has been "No story powers, no backstory, one hour, final destination!"

And now they've been doing it so long that they think everyone works that way. Instead of that being a deeply bizarre fringe thing that is basically only possible if you work at a game store or WotC. Everyone else would have to travel to someone's house to game and then travel back, thus making one hour lunch break D&D sessions something like 20 minutes of actual gaming and thus pointless to pursue.

Real people in the real world set aside periods after school or work to go to peoples' homes to play games. Or go to conventions and game instead of sleep. And all in all would like to have a gaming session that is at least as much of a time sink as going to movie, because that's basically what it is competing with.

But if you've been working at WotC for years and are deeply enmeshed in that groupthink, D&D is something you do at work, on your lunchbreak. And it's competing directly against playing a couple hands of Magic or checking your email before you have to look like you're being productive again.

-Username17

the_taken wrote:One hour? Fuck no! Playing a stupid board game can last somewhere between 20minutes and an hour, but that's because of the limit of a child's attention span. As an adult, I want to put off whole evenings just to mess around as a giant frog, dong snake, hat making dorf wizard, elven deku nut flinging savage, iron clad pudding knight, or emo dragon-fairy.

Mearls's argument is that it's easier to scale up from 1 hour to 4 or 8 or whatever, rather than vice versa. Personally, I'm not a fan of single battles that take an hour of real time, and I've seen a few of those.

Note that the "adventure" that he described sounded pretty rinky-dink (kill a few orcs, disarm a trap, solve a riddle, kill a few skeletons, kill the boss). That certainly wouldn't occupy a whole evening's worth of adventuring for a level 1 party in 3E.

WotC already has a one-hour fantasy game for five any number of players, and it's pretty successful; making D&D another MtG just seems like competing with themselves.

FrankTrollman wrote:Real people in the real world set aside periods after school or work to go to peoples' homes to play games. Or go to conventions and game instead of sleep. And all in all would like to have a gaming session that is at least as much of a time sink as going to movie, because that's basically what it is competing with.

I think you're probably misunderestimating the popularity of D&D Encounters. I thought it was fairly popular at least in part because it only takes an hour or two to play in the evening.

I tried it once, and I think there's definitely something to be said in favour of "snack-sized" sessions of D&D.

hogarth wrote:I tried it once, and I think there's definitely something to be said in favour of "snack-sized" sessions of D&D.

True. Games like Halo and Chess and Magic get entrenched because you can have a 45-minute satisfying session and you can have a long marathon of gaming. It's a tall order, but it's a good goal.

If D&D was going to do that (and they should) the biggest issue that they will have is speed and transparency with the main product. Which not only means that the actual game will have to have its base resolution time increased (meaning that a D&D Encounter v2.0 will either be something like a skill challenge and/or a couple of combat sessions) but what happens with this shenanigan has to 'count' with the main game. But it can't count too much, because otherwise it'll increase the time to do shit too much.

Personally, I'd market and design D&D encounters as side adjuncts to the main storyline. They should totally be pre-packaged outlines and maps like:

[*] Previously unknown rival adventuring team decides to take you out in the middle of whatever quest or mission you were doing.
[*] While taking a break in the middle of civilization, SUDDENLY ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.
[*] Locals whisper of the legendary Nightmare Circus that always appears before a massacre.

Again, I stress that mini-adventures (or rather, sidequest modules) should be outlines rather than the traditional modules. That way they don't hijack the plot of what the DM was doing previously. So the adventure needs to be able to come to the players and be agnostic to the particular locale or plotline -- or at least be flexible enough to adapt. You can drop a zombie apocalypse nearly anywhere that there's a town and a ghost pirate ship needs a bit more work, but the tale of the hobgoblin and orc armies going to war (and you're caught in the middle!) assumes too much about the generic campaign.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Personally, I'd market and design D&D encounters as side adjuncts to the main storyline. They should totally be pre-packaged outlines and maps like:

[*] Previously unknown rival adventuring team decides to take you out in the middle of whatever quest or mission you were doing.
[*] While taking a break in the middle of civilization, SUDDENLY ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.
[*] Locals whisper of the legendary Nightmare Circus that always appears before a massacre.

I'm not following you. D&D Encounters scenarios should be side adjuncts to the main storyline that you get when you play through the D&D Encounters scenarios? I must be reading that wrong.

I think it's more like how in Halo you can skip the cut-scenes and get right to shooting, for the most part. There's still some walking/driving around that's more like a cut-scene where you have control of the camera, but you can totally skip most of the story and just shoot aliens.

Lago is saying that you can sell fights that can be run under an hour to D&D players, and they'll buy it like candy. Delicious, goblin splattering, candy. They can still make stories, adventures and campaign settings, they'll just have little 3$ booklets that only contain the stat-blocks for a pack of monsters and a map of their lair/attack point.

They may be able to get away with it too, as all too often I've played with people that do shit dick all during any social or exploration portion of the game, but become completely engrossed when there's combat. They don't care about princesses, heroism or context, they just want to bring flaming axes to zombies, demons and animated desert toppings. They don't even care about money further than it helps them wail on more enemies.

hogarth: I mean more like D&D Encounters should be like miniature plot outlines and adaptations complete with an encounter table, treasure payout, and minimaps that get pasted into whatever the DM is normally running (which can even be a module) that emphasize combat and action.

This sort of sounds like what Dungeon is doing, but I believe that Dungeon isn't more popular than it is because it isn't transparent enough with the generic campaign and it requires the DM to set aside extra work to integrate it into the campaign. I mean, a dungeon based on the insides of a Mega Terrasque or on Vecna's original mage academy would be cool as hell, but it isn't exactly the kind of material that you can just mindlessly stick in a campaign.

The other thing is that D&D Encounters v2.0 should be made clear that what happens in it is relevant to the main storyline in some way, if for nothing else you have a chance at a shiny toy and experience. That way people in story-heavy games that want to do a quick dungeon crawl don't feel like they're taking a break to play HeroQuest and then picking up the 'normal' campaign like nothing had happened.

the_taken wrote: Lago is saying that you can sell fights that can be run under an hour to D&D players, and they'll buy it like candy. Delicious, goblin splattering, candy. They can still make stories, adventures and campaign settings, they'll just have little 3$ booklets that only contain the stat-blocks for a pack of monsters and a map of their lair/attack point.

I'd buy that.
Then the popular ones would drive up demand for specific settings, the company could yearly collect a bunch of the favorites and compile them in full color into anthologies self-contained in their own little setting, like a series of stories and map layouts in the front with mini-Monster Manual and unique items in the back.

Yes, D&D should be playable in 30 - 120 mins, and you can just keep going if desired. That facilitates playing after class, or online, etc. Not that many people really prefer to dedicate 4-6 hours to a single session. And if WotC is wanting to widen the net and lower that threshold to bring in new players, then lowering the standard adventure time is fine, so long as they accelerate the component parts (combat, skill challenges, etc.) without sacrificing too much entertainment value. That way it can actually compete with a movie or TV episode, meaningfully move the plot towards resolution (if not resolve a subplot or two) within that time-frame.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:hogarth: I mean more like D&D Encounters should be like miniature plot outlines and adaptations complete with an encounter table, treasure payout, and minimaps that get pasted into whatever the DM is normally running (which can even be a module) that emphasize combat and action.

I agree there's a market for that as well, but I kind of liked the serial aspect of D&D Encounters ("in episode #5, you talked to Sir Fooo and got the magic McGuffin and now you're going back to Barr Castle, when suddenly Lord Bazzz from episode #2 rides up with his soldiers, etc.") I mean, I didn't like it enough that it magically made me hunger to play 4E, but personally I prefer a main storyline to a bunch of little unrelated chunks that the GM has to piece together.

the_taken wrote:One hour? Fuck no! Playing a stupid board game can last somewhere between 20minutes and an hour, but that's because of the limit of a child's attention span. As an adult, I want to put off whole evenings just to mess around

sadly i think the attention span for modern adults is getting more childlike. they dont understand that MANY people still like to ease into something and have it last, rather than flash in the pan games like kids with shorter attention spans have.

sadly the 1-hour game reminded me of the facebook D&D Heroes of Neverwinter.

Each "quest" had the party go to one of many 6-room "dungeons" or locales, and at least 2 fights in each, maybe a 3rd. but i wouldnt consider that game as an RPG, its more of a quest-grinder.

an hour is not really any amount of time to have something like a game be enjoyable. it either went too fast and nothing feels important, or you only did one thing that was wholly important...then you stopped.

the time limit crap is too easily broken as i mentioned in the other thread. you plan for an hour and either the game finishes early or goes over by big margins. if you set aside 4 hours to play, you dont know where you end up in that time when its over, because you can NOT plan for it, you just dont know what will happen.

also playstyles vary so that game of BD&D that has been going on for 10 years and still has the characters at level 5 playing weekly isnt going to want to burn through things at a fast pace based on the XP per adventure within an hour.

1-hour adventurers are just level-grinder games to get you to the next level quicker.

is that really what Mearls thinks D&D is, or the modern players? a game of "hurry up and level"? no wonder 4th needed 30 levels @ 10 encounter per level. you burn through all the levels and its game over. jump off the level-ladder and start at the bottom rung again if you want to play.

i can play a TTRPG level grind much quicker than all that, just right down the highest level on my char sheet and im done. where did the game part go now? what is the point at playing the highest level if there is no other level to go to in a level-grinding game?

hogarth wrote:I agree there's a market for that as well, but I kind of liked the serial aspect of D&D Encounters ("in episode #5, you talked to Sir Fooo and got the magic McGuffin and now you're going back to Barr Castle, when suddenly Lord Bazzz from episode #2 rides up with his soldiers, etc.") I mean, I didn't like it enough that it magically made me hunger to play 4E, but personally I prefer a main storyline to a bunch of little unrelated chunks that the GM has to piece together.

I'd like to say that I agree with you and think that there's a market for that, but the tweak I'm going to propose is probably going to go outside the bounds of what you have in mind. So bear with me.

Taking your idea a bit further than you originally planned, I think that the D&D Encounters v3.0 like that should both be:

A.) much heavier on story and characterization than the typical module is. Or at least the typical 4E D&D modules I've played. I freely admit that except for a couple of historical modules like Red Hand of Doom, City of Worms, or White Plume Mountains, the vast majority of modules I've played or read have been 4E D&D ones.

B.) Going by A, D&D Encounters v3.0 should be a lot more railroady than they are. The unfortunate thing about story-heavy modules is that they can be completely derailed by something as simple as someone romancing a key NPC, going home to answer a summons from the paladin's academy, or just setting up a friggin' shop in a trade city. If you actually want to have a serial serial, like the kind of thing that you can read in Dungeon and enjoy without the specific details of what the characters did, you're going to have to tighten the rails. And I cannot stress this enough, you will also have to be upfront with people that you're railroading them.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:B.) Going by A, D&D Encounters v3.0 should be a lot more railroady than they are.

Have you played D&D Encounters? Because from my experience, it's impossible to get any more railroady than that.

the_taken wrote:Lago is saying that you can sell fights that can be run under an hour to D&D players, and they'll buy it like candy. Delicious, goblin splattering, candy. They can still make stories, adventures and campaign settings, they'll just have little 3$ booklets that only contain the stat-blocks for a pack of monsters and a map of their lair/attack point.

It beats canned multi-part idiot plots, that's for sure.

hogarth wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote:B.) Going by A, D&D Encounters v3.0 should be a lot more railroady than they are.

Have you played D&D Encounters? Because from my experience, it's impossible to get any more railroady than that.

"Players don't mind railroading if the scenery is nice and the destination is Awsometown."
Also, if essentials modules are basically drop-in ministories, agreeing to play them pretty much is agreeing to follow the tracks. If you ask your players, "Do you guys want to fight some zombies at lunch today?", they agree, and then they walk away from zombietown, that is your players being dicks.

Just to clarify, I'm proposing two separate options.

1.) Bite-sized $3 modules that take about 45-90 minutes to complete that serve as an outline w/ encounter tables, maps, and treasure table that you plop down when the campaign has some 'free' time or at least a period of time which isn't directly important to the overall story. They have a little bit of railroading in them, but because they're outlines rather than scripts the DM is expected to adapt details for the campaign. For example, the 'Ghost Pirate Ship tries to ram you' will not be a galleon in a Rokugan-inspired campaign.

2.) Larger serials that are a lot more story and character-based. The amount of content in them is smaller than D&D modules, but there's a lot more prose. You can read them like they're supposed to be regular stories and after-action reports. You can also directly drop players and PCs into them, too, but they're a lot more tightly controlled than the typical module. Basically the PCs are there to enjoy the tactical minigame, do improvisational theater, and make witty dialog.

I'm still curious Lago -- have you played (4E) D&D Encounters? If so, what was your experience like?

wait, I thought 4e was criticized for long combats
I thought AD&D and stuff was praised for 5-10 minute combats


So how can the latest version of D&D with HP bloat and complicated options be the ones made by the guys who are deviantly playing 1 hour D&D sessions?

OgreBattle wrote:wait, I thought 4e was criticized for long combats
I thought AD&D and stuff was praised for 5-10 minute combats


So how can the latest version of D&D with HP bloat and complicated options be the ones made by the guys who are deviantly playing 1 hour D&D sessions?

Mike Mearls is talking about playing a (simple) Basic D&D adventure in 1 hour, not 4E.

4e spirals out of control into padded sumo as levels increase. That is because it basically wasn't tested at high levels.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Just to clarify, I'm proposing two separate options.

1.) Bite-sized $3 modules that take about 45-90 minutes to complete that serve as an outline w/ encounter tables, maps, and treasure table that you plop down when the campaign has some 'free' time or at least a period of time which isn't directly important to the overall story. They have a little bit of railroading in them, but because they're outlines rather than scripts the DM is expected to adapt details for the campaign. For example, the 'Ghost Pirate Ship tries to ram you' will not be a galleon in a Rokugan-inspired campaign.

2.) Larger serials that are a lot more story and character-based. The amount of content in them is smaller than D&D modules, but there's a lot more prose. You can read them like they're supposed to be regular stories and after-action reports. You can also directly drop players and PCs into them, too, but they're a lot more tightly controlled than the typical module. Basically the PCs are there to enjoy the tactical minigame, do improvisational theater, and make witty dialog.

Hm, sounds like some newer MMOs which are trying to have their cake and eat it, too, with both an epic storyline (which is essentially the same for every character) and making PC choices matter (so side-quests will be highly varied). The larger serials would be great narratives (in theory, at least), while the side ones would allow for more role-playing and really whacky PC decisions. And I would be fine with that.

http://community.wizards.com/dndnext/bl ... d_treasure

Ugh. I hate morons who think that useful advice is bad, on the grounds that they might want to ignore said useful advice.