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I'm looking for feedback from those who have run the Cradle of Night module.
About how long did it take for your players to get through each part?
I'm considering trying to run this as a PFS sanctioned offering at a convention, but only if we can reasonably fit the content in the total time available.
I know some multi-mods are nearly impossible to fit in 3 days of play, but there are others where you can do a section in a slot or 2.
What experiences have others had with this one?
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It took 3 whole days, with the PC's skipping most of the Sadist Spires (by dimension dooring straight into the jail room by luck, and then facing off the boss, skipping all other encounters) and skipping nearly all of the Forsaken Fane by dimension dooring straight into the F25 with pure luck, going to F24 from there, F23, and the teleporting out. (Had them face off with Thelamistos outside of the fane since we had some time left and that encounter was pretty awesome).
We started about 3 pm on friday, finished around midnight (I think we did the first part on friday from start to finish), continued at 12.00 on saturday, probably continued again close to midnight, and continued on sunday at noon, finished before 7 pm.
We ran it pretty close to a PFS sanctioned mode, and if you want to finish it in 3 days, some encounters need to be skipped. Luckily, the players took care of that with smart scouting, and lucky dimension doors.
I had asked my players to make me a copy of their PFS characters so that I could have all the info readily available - And I told them we'd be playing in PFS mode. In truth, I had the players just play *copies* of their PFS characters, and ran the adventure in campaign mode. I think this worked very well, because it gave me the option to adjust things as needed, while letting players believe that their actual PFS character was constantly in danger (as opposed to just telling the players that we'd be running in campaign mode). No encounters were skipped unless the PC's were smart/creative, but the PC's skipped a lot of them, including around 90% of the actual fortress or something. Things that took the most time was the first dungeon (which they fully explored), Aiyana's house (which devolved into a huge combat that took the better part of saturday, we had a break after it, and that was maybe around 7pm).
Sunday was mostly RP with the NPC's they saved on saturday, and then a surgical strike at the Fane.
I don't think there's any reasonable way to fit this in to a convention in PFS mode. You could run it in campaign mode to cut it a lot shorter by skipping some of the non-story combats and/or using a quicker method of resolving combat encounters, but I think that's a disservice to this module - due to the nature of the corruption, the adventure Really benefits from having the players actually fear for their character's lives, which is easier to pull off when they have their own familiar PFS characters as opposed to some "I just rolled this char for this module" characters.
As a side note, I had a non-PFS playing friend play Aiyana for the adventure, and I think it was awesome for the adventure. It made everything a lot easier for me as a GM when I didn't need to play Aiyana in combats, while maintaining some mystery (and the possibility of betrayal?) for the PC's when the players didn't get to see her character sheet. Also, I fed her a lot of the background info and lore, and let her answer Player questions as Aiyana, which worked very well.
I really loved running the module, but it -is- a long one. For example, despite a similar format, gallows of madness is way, way shorter, and could probably fit into two 4 hour slots if the Players know they gotta keep up a good pace and don't waste time, but this... just needs considerably more time.
Honestly, if you asked how long it would take to run this, I'd probably tell you that you should prepare to run it over something like 5 to 8 five hour sessions.
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Thanks! This is precisely the kind of response I was hoping for. I'll wait to see if there are any differing data points out there, but it appears it took your group around 28 hours - with anything less than 25 hours being highly unlikely and the possibility that it could stretch to as much as 40 hours.
That tells me we probably need to budget the equivalent of at least six 5-hour slots, as 5 wouldn't be enough to let the fear and paranoia properly build.
That's two 5-hour slots for each of the 3 parts, which might be possible going from Friday evening though Sunday afternoon, but for schedule insurance it may be wiser to spread across 1-2 more slots, adding Friday afternoon and/or Sunday evening.
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We did part 1 in 9 hours with an extremely fast GM, spending the last hour and a half or so clearing out the leftovers of the dungeon (we also pulled both bosses at once but got pretty lucky). Part 2 took 10.5 hours with some skipped encounters (also by luck, as described above), but also some bad luck pulling several encounters all at once. Part 3 took almost 14 hours and could have taken longer, but I handwaved two easy fights, they skipped a tower, and I ended 3-4 encounters early (once they had a clear handle on things) because I was (rightfully) worried about time. They burnt a LOT of resources; a less prepared party probably would take longer (my party had 3 chronicle wands of lesser restoration and 1 restoration, everyone had multiple uses of flight, echolocation, etc).
PFS Mode can make it a bit easier because PCs can cross off corruptions between chronicles. Of course, that kind of guts the heart and soul of the module but that's how it goes.
We also had players run the bard — definitely not somethign the GM should be worried about!