I enjoy this adventure but compared to those that came before, it is taking veeeeery long.
We finished There is no honor in six gaming sessions, averaging at about six hours. Bullywug Gambit only took us three sessions (!), and felt refreshing.
With Sea Wyvern's Wake we already played 10 sessions and they have only just reached the Sargasso. There are loads of encounters in this one and many of them require roleplaying, not just dice rolling. By now it seems that my players are getting fed up with the whole sailing trip, so I skipped Renkrue and Ruja.
Hay anyone else experienced this? I'd also be interested in how long your gaming groups took for the adventures after SWW, Tides of dread seems long-lasting too.
The boat trip took my group at least three (maybe four) sessions. Long enough that the players truly appreciated how far they had traveled. Don't get mired down having to role play everything, gloss over some stuff to get the adventure moving at a decent speed. I try to pace my games with equal parts info gathering, role playing, slam-bang action.
Good luck! Get across the island took us three sessions, as well.
Lol my players are all about getting to the action. There is no Honor and Bullywug GambiHt took 2 sessions each, Sea Wyverns Wake took 3-4, Here there Be Monsters took 2, and Tides of Dread is bordering on 4. They tend to skip the details and jump into things.
10 game sessions for SWW is insane. I think that most of these adventures (at least the first 4) are designed to be finished in about 4 game sessions and can be done in 3-4 game sessions (occasionally less). Next week I will be running our 11th game session of Savage Tide and we are well into Here there be monsters. We did Sea Wyvern's wake in 2 and 1/2 game sessions. Granted we skipped a couple of encounters, but I added in a few others (expanding on Tomachoan a little). I'm not really sure how you would spend 10 game sessions on it unless you played out every aspect of the journey in excruciating detail. My players would go nuts if we spent that long on it. As it stands they still think that Far Shore is really living up to its name, and its only been a few game sessions since they left Sasserine. However, in fairness our past couple of game sessions have been long (7 hours about), and we are a pretty productive group when we get going. We do spend some time with rping encounters, but tend to breeze through such events fairly quickly and move forward with the action and adventure. See "a canuk runs savage tide" on the journals postings for all the gory details.
I expect SWW to take some time, as I am hesitant to just "fast forward to the action". Besides, I'm hoping that by playing up the NPC relationships...
The only problem with this adventure is the rather convoluted layout. This can slow the adventure down, because you end up having to refer back to various pages and events, while trying to keep the pace up. If you get some of those Post-It page markers, and mark the start of each section you need, as you will need it (such as Events, Minor Encounters, Major Encounter Spots, Appendices, and the couple of "Dungeons"), you will be able to speed up your gameplay much more, and not seem like your forcing focus on any NPCs.
On that note, what I'm doing is charting out a chronological outline of the adventure, to aid me in delegating how much time I want to attribute to any given section. (I'll try to post this in a spoiler on this thread when completed.)
Still, as the saying goes, if they're all having a good time (you, too), then kick back and enjoy the ocean voyage!
SWW took us 6 sessions at an average of 9-10 hours per session. It totally gave back the feeling of a lengthy voyage. I think this was one of the best adventures in the series so far.
rarely needed more than four sessions for any single installment, although we have "refurbishment session" where shopping social interaction , planning and other "downtime" stuff is being played out and resolved - those usually happen between adventures when there is no obvious time-table pressure to resolve a problem. Playing with an average 5-6 hours/session,
As for SSW - yeah there are terrific number of possible encounters, but not all of them are equally attractive to players or need to be forced on them - the "pirate-holdup" took all of 20 minutes for us with the PCs lobbing a pair of fireballs at the apporaching vessel which hailed them to lay by and put down arms.... One blazing wreck later.... Nobody was interested in downtown activities at the two stop-overs, or exploring the ruined fort and jungles surrounding it. And we only stopped at (the very relevant) Tamoachan, because Urol had negotiated that stop with Lavinia herself. The players weren't all that happy about baby-sitting him.... especially not after meeting up with the basilisk and the will-o'
Either your players enjoy playing out every single encounter they can get their hands on (and in that case, why is it "taking too long" then - they are enjoying themselves, which is the reason why we play, right ? ), other stuff interferes with the playing (not the fault of the adventure) or they feel adrift and disoriented, clutching at straws for clues....
SWW took us 6 sessions at an average of 9-10 hours per session. It totally gave back the feeling of a lengthy voyage. I think this was one of the best adventures in the series so far.
Sorry, brief threadjack, but how do you find the time for 9-10 hours? My group struggles to fit in a weekly 3 1/2 game with once-a-month five hour extended sessions.
El Skootro
Could part of the the extension of time be coming from them trying to bite at every plot hook? When my players reached Fort Blackrock they wanted to chase the Lizardfolk in the jungle and hunt them down, despite the fact the trail had gone cold and was nigh impossible to find. Then they wanted to stop at Ruja and have the gnome with the slippers of spider climbing scale up the sheer cliffs and lower a rope.
They have a very "Well if it's in the adventure, it must be for us to exploe" mentality.
~ Bryon ~
Each installment has also been taking us around 3 sessions.
Due to the length of this campaign I don't go into tons of details in between encounters, my players are always ready for action!
We are in the middle of the battle for Farshore right now in Tides of Dread and the 5 Vrocks (yes they were able to summon 2 more) have just decided to try and destroy the party. This should get interesting since Vrocks are pretty tough for 10th level characters.
I usualy find the encounters I tend to imagine will take the longest finish in about 3 seconds and vice versa:)
I usualy find the encounters I tend to imagine will take the longest finish in about 3 seconds and vice versa:)
I get this too. Drives me nuts. Actually at high levels the length of time combat can take seems to get really variable. Could run a long time if the players debate tactics or it might be over almost before it began if they instead simply open by unleashing their most powerful abilities and magic items from the get go.
Thus my experience is that the length of an encounter can have a lot to do with your players perception of what is going on. If they are sure that this is the BBEG and there really is nothing more to this adventure well its easy to start using up even limited resources fast.
When combat takes the longest, in my experience, is when the PCs belatedly realize that the situation is much more dangerous then they had at first realized - that causes everyone to start blathering "what do we do? what do we do?" at each other and by this point the option to layer massive amounts of fire power down on the bad guys is no longer available. Usually at least one and maybe more of the players are critically hurt others are caught out of position and in combat, the cleric has 5 players all begging for healing and can't use an offensive type spell and the mage - as often as not - is now trying to find a spell that will help save endangered players or deal with an unexpected threat as opposed to blowing bad guys to the nether regions of Hell.
At this point combat slows to a crawl. However as DMs the inclination is to set aside the most time for the big complex BBEG fights.
They have a very "Well if it's in the adventure, it must be for us to exploe" mentality.
My players were exactly the same way, and for me it was a huge opportunity for fun. Granted, it's nearly as much work as an entirely home-brewed campaign, but it was a good opportunity to really get a feel for the tropical atmosphere of the game. A lot of D&D seems to take place in relatively familiar terrain (Appalachian Mountains look a lot like most fantasy movies, and West Virginia has more trees than buildings). My group went wild running around exploring off the main gaming maps. Yes, as DM it was a hassle constantly improving things, but at least we knew where our five or six sessions per issue went.
I usualy find the encounters I tend to imagine will take the longest finish in about 3 seconds and vice versa:)
Too true...
Rowyn made herself an infuriating part of the early leg of the adventure by following up her mephit-prank with the ol' "cut the yardarm, and let her fly at a PC" trick. I was hoping to lead into her seducing a PC, as a surprising number of players have bit the bait of the "romantic love interest" plot device.
Still, the party's suspicions reached near-paranoia levels, combing the whole ship for the sign of a stowaway, or the like. While Rowyn made herself practically undetectable, the artificer in the party "faked" a detect evil spell, and proceeded to investigate every nook and cranny of the Sea Wyvern. The end result was that she fled to a small room, disguised herself as a girl whom had been attacked by some monster, and smashed a small hole in the ship. (She had previously been invisible, but not outright detectable other than through detect evil.) The PCs didn't buy it, leading her to desperately try to fight her way out. One swift dagger-hurling PC pinned her to the wall like a butterfly, and that was it for the former guildmistress of the Lotus Dragons...all in one character's first round. (Note: truth be told, the player's min-maxed this knife thrower, so considering the confined space she occupied, it was to be expected.)
Nevertheless, they are in the midst of Tamoachan, and one member of the party--now packing more see invisibility--provoked Tlanextli, the Will-o'-Wisp. But personally, I can't wait for the fight with Sutolore.
It's a wonderful adventure, though, and I'm excited to see a long stretch of travel in a campaign.