Just 2 days to explore Danger Isle?

[Grafz]

I touched on this in the other thread (about optimal strategies (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43fkh?Optimal-Strategy-to-explore-Danger-Isla nd-and#1) for approaching the Danger Island book)

But I wonder a bit about the timeline. My group just made it through the 1st dungeon, which is set up to take ~1 day (and certainly feels like a full days worth of activity and grants 3 / 10 feathers).

That leaves you with 2 days and ~2 fights. (The optimization thread explains my thinking). I suppose that that's why the adventure length is 3 days? You probably want to have 2 fights, a few cool other scenes (watching other fights, friendly sparring with Tino's Toughest, introduce Lightkeepers) and then on to the next book.

And the big picture structure (where you could be challenged at any time) pushes groups to stay healthy and avoid conflict.

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Given length of the book available and the overall flow of the optimal play group that's probably right? Most groups kinda rush through, DM handwaves xp and you're on to the next book. It's a martial arts movie and you're just setting up the "serious contenders" for the "real tournament".

The whole place has a (fairly deliberate?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isle_of_Dread vibe (the name, hexploration, etc). Also, really big monsters romping around and causing chaos is a sub-theme (which is expressed fully at the end of book 2).

There's also a shonen battlemanga thing where you have a lot of colorful antagonists to introduce. The ideal (though tricky) thing to do would be to feature most of the enemy teams at least once on the island.
They could seeing the enemy team
-in a match or other challenge
-on the first scene on the beach
-in passing as they move around the island
-challenging the enforcers?

I tend toward more simulationist/completest vibes, I like option-ful sandboxes for PCs to explore and I'd like to see the PCs get a chance to explore the island.

Also it would be nice to have some ups and downs. Maybe the PCs don't win every battle? If the Lightkeepers get their last feather off the PCs and they have to catch up to advance it's probably set them up nicely as rivals?
(I'm not usually particularly heavy handed, but that kind of thing seems like it would increase tension).

I'm thinking about making the tournament time longer? Maybe a week?
(In my game I'd probably actually handwave it a bit but I realize some groups probably don't go for that style of play).

[Calpal]

The players actually have about 3 full days to explore the island (although the evening of the 3rd day is not really available to them).

First day is clearing out the temple, second and third days are exploring the island in the pre-qualifier and the fourth day is the pre-qualifier in the morning and afternoon and then the events at the palace in the evening. (It's entirely possible to skip right to the evening events on the fourth day if the players have enough feathers, of course).

Additionally, after clearing the temple the players can go explore the island a bit and do some advanced scouting if they aren't too beat up from the day's events.

I'm expecting my players to do a lot of exploring. They are mostly martial with one prepared caster (cleric) so I'm expecting them to be able to heal up pretty quick and press on. Other than that I agree with having ups and downs for the PCs.

[mikeawmids]

When I read this module, I also thought there was too much there to realistically cram into a 3/4 day window. I'm likely going to handwave the hard deadline and just say that the first [however many teams] to reach the top of the mountain with the requisite # of feathers progress to the tournament proper.

[Luis Loza]

The adventure is intentionally overloaded with locations and encounters. The idea is that no single group of PCs will be able to see everything on the island, so they have to decide what sites they want to prioritize. In a meta context, it's also so no group has the exact same progression through the adventure, which can encourage sharing stories.

Feel free to tweak the time frame for the PCs if you want them to visit every site, but be careful if you do! There is too much XP on the island and the PCs will be overleveled by the time they are done checking off everything on the island. If you want to have a completionist run of the island, I recommend sticking with a milestone leveling scheme so the PCs aren't too powerful for volume two.

[CorvusMask]

I do believe it should be extremely hard/lucky in adventure with timelimit for players to literally see everything.

Do note that there are plenty of encounters that are "this is just animal lair unrelated to contest in anyway and no even dead adventurer loot", players don't really miss much by ignoring those

[Grafz]

mikeawmids wrote:

When I read this module, I also thought there was too much there to realistically cram into a 3/4 day window. I'm likely going to handwave the hard deadline and just say that the first [however many teams] to reach the top of the mountain with the requisite # of feathers progress to the tournament proper.

This... makes the most sense to me. The island is pretty random. Who's to say that 8 teams would make it in 3 days.

[Grafz]

Luis Loza wrote:

The idea is that no single group of PCs will be able to see everything on the island,

I'm confused.

Nobody was asking "how can they see every encounter and fight every CR 15 monster".

The "minimum good version"* of the experience would have the PCs interact with each of the elements in some fashion and also set up the next 2 books. I think it's something like this?
--Interact with most (ideally all) of the teams that they'll see
--Interact with the cool teams that don't make it (the Hundreds, etc)
--Interact with the Light Bringers in some kind of ominous way
--Challenge other teams to get 7 more feathers (more if they lose)
--Be challenged by someone
--Interact with Tito's Toughest
--Shop at the Stone Market
--Fight, or at least see, some giant monsters*
--Checkout a watch tower
--Find a treasure

The players should
--Get enough exposure to the hex system to be comfortable with it and feel like they can make meaningful decisions
--Not feel too rushed or stressed out
--Have a chance to get a sense for the other competitors
--Feel like the have agency, which means that stuff takes longer than you'd expect.

This feels to me like waaaaay more than 2 days worth of stuff.

Obviously there are things (fighting with the enforcers, the abandoned mine with the forgeries, actually fighting a giant monster) on top of that that are optional but that's not what we're talking about.

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*If people think there is a smaller minimum good version I'd be happy to hear about it.

But my version isn't some kind of 120% video game map completion thing.

[Grafz]

To be clear, Mr. L, you could have written a bare, desert island with a bunch of fighting pits.

You wrote an awesome environment with lots to do! I'm impressed with how much cool stuff is packed in there.

As a tour guide (the DM) I'd like to do a decent job of hitting the highlights. I just don't think it's feasible for that to happen in 2 days?

I don't think the adventure could possibly feel samey. Between the optional dungeon, all the different teams (+teams people make up and change), the results of different battles, characterization of the NPCs, etc. Each play through will feel radically different.

Why not use mikeawmids suggestion? Or, alternatively, is there some reason 2 days was selected? (Like is it a reference to something in the battle royale genre?)

[Kasoh]

Grafz wrote:

The "minimum good version"* of the experience would have the PCs interact with each of the elements in some fashion and also set up the next 2 books. I think it's something like this?

--Interact with most (ideally all) of the teams that they'll see
--Interact with the cool teams that don't make it (the Hundreds, etc)
--Interact with the Light Bringers in some kind of ominous way
--Challenge other teams to get 7 more feathers (more if they lose)
--Be challenged by someone
--Interact with Tito's Toughest
--Shop at the Stone Market
--Fight, or at least see, some giant monsters*
--Checkout a watch tower
--Find a treasure

The players should
--Get enough exposure to the hex system to be comfortable with it and feel like they can make meaningful decisions
--Not feel too rushed or stressed out
--Have a chance to get a sense for the other competitors
--Feel like the have agency, which means that stuff takes longer than you'd expect.

This feels to me like waaaaay more than 2 days worth of stuff.

Obviously there are things (fighting with the enforcers, the abandoned mine with the forgeries, actually fighting a giant monster) on top of that that are optional but that's not what we're talking about.

--------

*If people think there is a smaller minimum good version I'd be happy to hear about it.

But my version isn't some kind of 120% video game map completion thing.

Well, my minimum good version is 'PCs get 10 feathers to finish the adventure in the timeframe and have fun.' My only real concern would be redundancy of overpreparing material they won't get to.

[The Rot Grub]

Don't forget also that some sites will already be "cleared" by opposing teams. When I run this I'll want to make it feel like a living, breathing place and give a sense that the PCs are in a race against other teams. Maybe even have a rival team leave a taunting note for other teams saying that they killed amazing X monster, the loot was great, and "sorry you didn't get the silver feather we found" lol.

[Calpal]

Just wanted to reinforce that it is actually 2 days plus a good chunk of the 3rd day and also however much remaining time the players want to spend exploring on the zero day (when they are clearing out the temple). At least 3 days.

[Skya]

Grafz wrote:

I just don't think it's feasible for that to happen in 2 days?

You keep saying 2 days, but it's 3. The temple exploration happen on day 0, the preliminary round officially start the day after.

And the pc don't have to meet all of the other 31 teams and go to every location. If you want to do it that way, you can, but that's not how this adventure is written.

[Curaigh]

Grafz wrote:

The "minimum good version"* of the experience would have the PCs interact with each of the elements in some fashion and also set up the next 2 books. I think it's something like this?

--Interact with most (ideally all) of the teams that they'll see
--Interact with the cool teams that don't make it (the Hundreds, etc)
--Interact with the Light Bringers in some kind of ominous way
--Challenge other teams to get 7 more feathers (more if they lose)
--Be challenged by someone
--Interact with Tito's Toughest
--Shop at the Stone Market
--Fight, or at least see, some giant monsters*
--Checkout a watch tower
--Find a treasure
...

This feels to me like waaaaay more than 2 days worth of stuff.
...
*If people think there is a smaller minimum good version I'd be happy to hear about it.

I think you can combine some of the above, such as the party cresting a hill and seeing Team A in battle with a giant monster.

There are a bunch of rubies on the Phoenix necklace and I plan to use these to show clips from other teams. I already planted the seed by showing a bunch of rubies zipping in and out of the teams as they debarked at the docks. About sundown on the first night, the rubies will begin glowing and a holographic image of an enforcer will request to see the team out front of Irori's temple. In that conversation, The enforcers will show a holographic 'highlight reel' of the prequalifier (such as Team X fighting undead in the watch tower, or team Z praying at the shrines, and our team hiding in a room while the monk tries to sneak a silver feather from the ribs of a dead woman--who is not so dead).

The sidebar about foreshadowing the Light Bringers touches on this. The party stumbles across them just as they are finishing another team.