I'm currently running Age of Worms and one of my players is also playing in someone else's Shackled City game. I haven't played in Shackled City yet, and he'd like to run it after my campaign and his campaign are over (around October). I'd like to run Savage Tide and also play in his Shackled City campaign with the rest of my players.
One option I'm mulling over is having him SCAP during our current weekly Wednesday 4 hour AoW game. As a change of pace, I'm considering running Savage Tide once a month as a marathon session, starting Saturday morning and playing until we're done with the monthly module.
On average, how long does it take you to run the AP modules?
Right now we're half way through Spire of Long Shadows. We just finished our 40th session, and each session is 4 hours long. I figure on average each module has taken us about 24 hours. As a marathon session do you think it would take more or less time than spaced out sessions? Do you think your group could run an enjoyable game if you started at 8am Saturday and ran through until 4am Sunday?
I'm thinking of testing this out in the next few months with Torrents of Dread from 114. Instead of running the marathon game with 4 players using 6th level characters, I'm thinking of running it with 6 players using 5th level, 32 point buy Eberron characters who have access to all 3.5 WotC books (including Eberron but excluding Forgotten Realms). Do you think the adventure would be enough of a challenge, or do you think I should scale it up to 7th or 8th using the sidebar? Do you think they could survive the newly scaled adventure at level 4? Level 3?
I'd like it to be an incredibly difficult adventure, and my players will know going into it that's it's a one-shot and the chance of a TPK will be high. I'm also considering a variant death system just for this event so that characters can't die at -10 hit points; with divine magic anyone can be be healed back to full. The only way the party will go down is with a TPK, and the players will know ahead of time that this will be a survival horror sneak preview of our next campaign.
I might explain this strange variant death system by creating a strange planar manifest area that blocks souls from going to Dolurrh. If there is a TPK, perhaps the players can find their old character's still in a revivable state, and if they choose they can raise them and replace their characters or take them up as cohorts. Thoughts?
A variant Death's Door rule that we're using in my AoW campaign is that a character dies at -10 or their negative Con score (whichever is lowest). They also have a 10% or Con score% chance of stabilizing. This has actually come in handy a few times and we're not even through the Whispering Cairn.
As for comments on your particular model you presented it reminds me of a Final Fantasy game or other such video game. You might look into the Iron Heroes setting. If anything it gives a good mechanic for reserve points and damage.
As for comments on your particular model you presented it reminds me of a Final Fantasy game or other such video game. You might look into the Iron Heroes setting. If anything it gives a good mechanic for reserve points and damage.
In our normal Age of Worms campaign we use Action points to cheat death. It costs 2 action points to keep your soul from escaping to Dolurrh. Even with this stipulation we've gone through two deaths so far. :)
In my SCAP campaign, an adventure is taking about 10-14 hours of gaming to finish. I would recommend a 1 hour food and B.S. break halfway through the gaming session and you should be able to do one whole adventure in a marathon game if the players cooperate and stay on target.
We ALWAYS run weekend marathon sessions, due to the fact that most of the group lives too far away from each other and work schedules are too varied to do a shorter weeknight session. I have completed the SCAP and have run the AoWAP up to "A Gathering of Winds" using all marathon weekend sessions. There has only been one adventure, 3FoE to be exact, that we did not finish in one weekend session, and that was mostly due to a TPK. I had 4 PC's for SCAP and have had up to 8 at times, but average about 6 PC's for the AoWAP.
We usually start early Saturday morning, and on rare occasions, get a few hours in on Friday night as well. We play until we are done, which is usually Sunday afternoon. We take regular breaks for food and out-of-game conversation as well as irregular breaks for sleep ;-)
Coincidentally, I have started using the same variant death's door rules as Timault Azal-Darkwarren. With the high mortality rate of the AP's, it seems prudent. It seems to work OK so far with the AoW's I'm running in Eberron.
Takasi, I believe that "Torrents of Dread" should give you a good idea of how a marathon session will work with your group for the AP modules, as well as how the Isle of Dread will feel in Eberron. BTW, I like your idea of having the Isle having some strange manifest zone preventing souls from going to Dolurrh. Maybe this could also explain the reapltionship between the island tribes and the zombies?
We run 4 hour sessions and Whispering Cairn took us 3 sessions and 3FoE is going to be entering its 6 session. I hope that no other adventures take as long as 3FoE or we'll be playing this AP until we're 60.
I have 6 to 8 players in SCAP, to finish the first adventure it took around 9 session of 8 hours!!!!!!
I haven't had time for a marathon session since college.
I haven't had time for a marathon session since college.
Well partner, that been too long...
I haven't had time for a marathon session since college.
I haven't done a Marathon session for years either. Jobs, Signifigant Others, Education, etc all conspire that we don't do that anymore.
I can remember one summer towards the end of High School when we'd play Marathon sessions at least a couple of times a week, alternating between Shadowrun and DnD, with a little SNES action during the breaks in play.
We went from Hommlet through to "Final" showdown with Lolth in the DemonWebs (via the Temple of Elemental Evil, Slavers, Giants & Underdark modules along the way), and played through both Harlequin mega-adventures and a bunch of other adventures for Shadowrun.
Man, thinking back on it, I bet we put in 30 hours of RPG gaming a week on average that summer, plus all the video game time. I miss not having responsiblilites and the biggest worry being how to fill the over-abundant spare time.
I'm running SCAP. We meet for 4 hours every Wednesday. We are still in Life's Bazaar (the first adventure). We are 4 sessions in and have about 1 session left (maybe 2). So that means 5 4-hour sessions for one adventure. I dont know if each chapter will be the same. I added some content to this one. And I added more NPC interaction to get storylines going. But they are also moving through the dungeon with a purpose, bypassing the majority of Jzadirune (they captured a skulk and got him to tell them how to get to the elevator down to the Malachite Fortress).
On average, how long does it take you to run the AP modules?
4-5 sessions per AP module, and we usually one have 3 hours of actual playtime once everyone comes over, the table gets prepped with snacks, books, characters sheets, battlemap, etc...
So yeah, with my group we could marathon through an AP adventure in one session of around 10-12 hours of actual playtime... but I don't think we ever will due to time constraints.
We play (I am the DM) every other Sunday from 1600 to 2130, minus an hour for food, bs, etc. so 4.5 hours generaly.
We just started Demonskar, and it has taken us 5 session (22.5) hours on average for the other chapters.
Do you plan on putting out some kind of summary from each game? I play once a week and if we skip a week I find it hard to rememeber what we were doing last (maybe I'm just getting old). Once a month would be a real struggle without some kind of summary. Sure you wouldn't forget the big things like we have to get the kidnap victums from the lizardfolk, but you will forget the little details like the people you have talked to and the small hints they have given you that would make the adventure easier. Just a thought.
As far as marathon sessions. Well I probably haven't done one in 15 years or so. They were fun at the time, but I'm not sure I could do them now. It's tough for me to get a whole day uninterupted unless the wife and kids are out of town and work leaves me alone.