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 When writing an adventure for RPGA convention play, it can be tempting to jam in too many great encounter ideas. After all, if a four-encounter adventure is good, an eight encounter-adventure must be twice as good, right?
Well, not if the GMs are the only ones who ever get to see the last four encounters.
This column addresses one of the biggest challenges facing the writer of an RPGA adventure: designing an adventure that fits within the timeframe of the average four-hour convention slot.
First of all, dispense with the idea that you’re writing a four-hour-long adventure. A solid half-hour of that time, sometimes more, is lost to mustering your teams, finding your tables, and unpacking all your stuff. The GM has to set up whatever materials the adventure calls for (playmats, miniatures, NPC record sheets, and so on) before the action can even begin. Thus, you should aim to write adventures that fill no more than about three-and-a-half hours. Using 200 minutes as a target time is a pretty good start.
I can already hear the wailing writers. “But what if they finish too early? Won’t they feel like they didn’t get their money’s worth?” Relax, that’s rarely a problem. Unless a group is unusually efficient, most convention games tend to run long, not short, due to periodic bathroom breaks, snack runs, or just players being unfamiliar with each other's play styles. And even if a group manages to make its way through your deadly maze a half-hour early or so, the players are much more likely to remember the adventure for the cool encounters and interesting sights and sounds of the dungeon, than for the amount of time it took. That said, it is certainly possible to write an adventure that’s too short, and nobody wants to sit around for two hours waiting for the next slot to begin, but we’ll get to some tips on how to add flexibility to your adventure length later in the column.
The much more likely result is that most groups won’t finish your epic-length masterpiece. They’ll battle through the first few layers of the mad wizard’s minions, but they won’t ever see the lava-filled room with the whirling blades of death and crazed half-demon bodyguards protecting the wizard as she puts the finishing touches on her master plan to take over the kingdom. This puts the GM into the uncomfortable role of deciding exactly how much of your adventure to use. Run it as written, and groups leave the table without the big payoff finale. Skip over encounters to get to the finale and groups might overcome it too easily, or feel like the GM just fast-forwarded the movie to get to the end. Either way, the players walk away feeling unfulfilled.
Two Hundred Minutes
When expressed like that, the length of gaming time in an average slot doesn’t sound like a lot, but when playing a well-crafted adventure, it will seem just right. Ideally, your adventure is paced well enough to keep the players feeling active and involved for the approximately three-and-one-half hours they’re at the table.
However, pacing’s an issue for another time. Right now, let’s figure out exactly how much gaming 200 minutes can hold.
To do that, you have to determine how many encounters can fit into that timeframe. Of course, not all encounters are equal. A fight with a bunch of orcs doesn’t take nearly as long as a battle against a tough dragon or a well-supported enemy spellcaster. In general, low-level encounters take less time to play out than high-level encounters. Low-level characters have fewer options at their fingertips, meaning that each player’s decision of what to do on his turn is quicker and easier. There are fewer attacks, checks, and saves, so there’s less dice-rolling. Finally, the GM’s job is simpler, since he has fewer rules to look up, fewer spells and magic items to use, and easier monsters to run. Conversely, at higher levels, players frequently resort to flipping through rulebooks for spell descriptions, GMs must consult monster abilities, and the sheer number of options multiplies dramatically.
The following paragraphs tackle the issue of how many encounters you can fit into a 200-minute session. These are average numbers, designed to cover the majority of situations. When in doubt, aim low. Include one fewer encounter than you think an average group could achieve in the time allotted. Don’t use your home group as an example of an average group. Chances are that you’ve been playing together for some time, and your players (as well as the GM) are all used to each other’s style of play. Remember that every RPGA player is different, most of them aren’t used to playing together, and no GM is likely to know your adventure as well as you.
Character Levels 1-4
On average, a single player’s turn in low-level games, takes anywhere from a half-minute to a minute, including making decisions, rolling dice, and recording the results. That 30 to 60 seconds typically includes a single attack or spell, maybe a move, and maybe a saving throw or two for the opponents. Some turns are quicker (“I do nothing.”) but others are longer (“I move past the orcs, provoking three attacks of opportunity, jump over the chasm, and sneak attack the blurred wizard.”) That’s a lot of rolls. As he usually runs more than one character, the GM’s turn take longer than the players' turn: on average, maybe twice as long. All told, an average round of low-level combat lasts somewhere between 4 and 8 minutes. Assuming an average encounter length of 5 rounds, and adding in another 10% or so for pre-fight preparations and post-fight healing, searching, and the like, that’s a total of 22 to 44 minutes per encounter. Over the course of a 200-minute session, you could expect to fit in somewhere from 5 to 9 encounters. Seven is probably a good target number, particularly if most of them are combat-oriented.
Some encounters break these guidelines. A trap or role-playing encounter doesn’t usually take nearly as long, since it’s usually only one or two characters taking the actions. In that case, you can estimate the “time value” of the encounter by dividing the number of characters you expect to take part by 6. A trapped chest probably involves only one character (the rogue), and thus would take one-sixth the normal time, and count as about one-sixth of an encounter for time purposes. If the group has to talk a city guard into letting them pass after dark, you can expect that no more than a couple of characters take active part in that discussion, and thus the encounter shouldn’t take longer than one-third the normal time, and maybe even less. A trapped room that seals all characters inside while the room fills with water probably involves all six characters, and thus would count as a full normal encounter. At the other extreme, a really tough encounter, particularly one that features lots of opponents, might count as one-and-one-half or even two encounters.
Character Levels 5-8
At these levels, characters have many more options. Spellcasters have access to spells that affect many targets simultaneously, forcing the GM to make multiple saves each time such a spell is cast, and warriors attack two or more times per round. Monsters frequently have multiple attacks, reach, or special abilities that require adjudication by the GM (and rolls by the players). Three-dimensional combat becomes common, which can slow down the game as well.
All this leads to longer action times and by extension longer rounds and encounters. A typical player action at these levels can take anywhere from 45 to 90 seconds, assuming the player has adequate familiarity with his character’s abilities, particularly in the case of spellcasters. A single round then takes from 6 to 12 minutes, including the GM’s actions, and a full encounter about 30 to 60 minutes. Again adding in 10% for the inevitable pre- and post-fight maneuvers, and we get a total of 33 to 66 minutes per encounter. This suggests that anywhere from three to six such encounters can fit into our 200-minute session, with four being a good target. Again, some encounters might count for more or less than a regular encounter, as described above.
Character Levels 9-12
As characters reach higher levels, their options continue to multiply dramatically. Fighters swing their swords or shoot their bows two or three times per round, spellcasters may cast two spells per round, summoned monsters become more common, and attack and defense numbers are often recalculated on a round-by-round basis, thanks to spells and other effects. Characters may even have to fight the same foes more than once, as each side commonly has the ability to fall back and restock their resources quickly.
Of course, action times continue to increase in time. Allowing anywhere from one to two minutes per character, and twice that for the GM, is probably a low estimate. Each round can easily take 10 to 15 minutes, making a single encounter last an hour or more. A particularly challenging encounter can easily eat up half of your 200-minute gaming time. At these levels of play, expecting the characters to make it through more than 3 normal encounters is probably overly optimistic.
Character Levels 13 and up
At the highest levels of play, combat can become grindingly slow as characters search through their lists of equipment, spells, and abilities to find just the right choice. Even the most experienced players need time to evaluate a complicated battlefield, and less-experienced players can easily become overwhelmed by the options available. Even the “basic fighter” becomes a complex character requiring many rolls. A full attack by a fighter of this level might include a dozen rolls or more, including up to four or five sets of attack rolls, miss chances, critical hit confirmations, and damage rolls. Spellcasters routinely cast two spells per round, control multiple summoned creatures or active spell effects, track durations on a half-dozen spells simultaneously, and so on.
You can expect each character’s turn to take at least two minutes, and sometimes as long as five minutes. Even the number of rounds in a typical combat becomes difficult to anticipate. 10-round fights aren’t terribly uncommon, especially against foes with the ability to teleport into and out of combat with ease. In the hands of an unprepared GM, a single encounter at this level can take up most of a slot, and even experienced, battle-hardened GMs find themselves hard-pressed to run more than a couple such encounters in the space of 200 minutes.
The Bonus Encounter
Even taking all those numbers into account, adventure design is as much art as science. No one can predict how long a given group of RPGA players will actually take to get through an adventure. A group of six players who know each other well, perhaps even who have played together many times before, can race through an adventure much faster than a bunch of random players who’ve never met each other. GM style, experience, and preparation also factors greatly into the amount of time an adventure takes. Some GMs run a quick, efficient game, working hard to keep players on track and focused, while others prefer a laissez-faire approach, allowing the players to dictate pace. A GM who has important rules memorized, or knows where to find them fast, can cut down on encounter time significantly. Of course, there’s no replacement for a GM simply being prepared to run the adventure in front of him, whether that’s taking notes about spells and special abilities he expects to use (and be used against him), book-marking important rules in the books, or creating simple tactics to use for specific encounters.
So what happens when all these factors come together in a “perfect table” and the group speeds through your 200-minute masterpiece in a mere two hours? That’s where the bonus encounter comes in.
Simply put, the bonus encounter is an extra challenge that the GM can throw in if the group seems to be zipping through the adventure too quickly. The encounter shouldn’t be critical to the storyline of the adventure, since it may or may not actually occur, but it should fit the theme you’ve created. It can be anything from a “wandering monster” not accounted for in the other room descriptions of the dungeon, to an ally arriving in the nick of time from “off-screen,” to a layer of defenses added at the last minute by whoever’s in charge of the area.
The bonus encounter should be no higher than the average EL of the other encounters in the adventure, and can even be a little lower, though it shouldn’t appear obviously weaker than everything else encountered, or the characters won’t waste many resources on it. Remember, the main goal of the bonus encounter is to eat up time, and secondarily to use up character resources such as spells or one-shot items. It shouldn’t push the characters to their limits, as that’s for your toughest, and likely final, encounter.
A bonus encounter should include clear guidelines for the GM on how and when to use it. For instance, the encounter might say, “If the characters have defeated the goblin warriors guarding the front door, the hobgoblin sergeants in room 2, and the fiendish hobgoblin barbarian in room 3, and at least 2 hours remain to play, the bugbear druid and his bear companion enter the stockade behind the characters and encounter them shortly after the fight in room 3.” The bonus encounter can be triggered in more than one way, as well: “Alternatively, if the characters make it through the first two encounters in less than 30 minutes, add the druid and wolf to the encounter with the barbarian.”
Don’t wait until the characters are kicking in the door to the final encounter with half the remaining time left to spring the bonus encounter unless you can’t help it. That can often seem obvious to the players, as they frequently know when the last encounter is coming, and throwing in a surprise can leave cagey players nodding sarcastically. “Sure, the warlord put a deathtrap on the door into his library. I hear all the warlords are doing that these days.”
Ideally, a bonus encounter should feel like a logical part of the adventure. It can certainly surprise the players, as good encounters often surprise players, but it shouldn’t defy the internal logic of your adventure. A group of off-duty guards heading from their barracks to the kitchen for a late snack makes sense, but the same group of guards all hanging out right outside their captain’s quarters probably doesn’t. A ranger and his wolf coming back from their nightly hunt while the characters catch their breath after a fight is a reasonable surprise, but a blue dragon suddenly dropping into the courtyard while the characters sneak across isn’t, unless the adventure sets up the possibility of such a strange occurrence earlier on.
The bonus encounter shouldn’t feel like a punishment doled out to effective players. This is a reward for good play—extra gaming activity added to the session—not a disincentive for characters to efficiently overcome the challenges of the adventure. If the “reward” for beating the first two encounters in a mere 20 minutes is three characters being eaten by a red dragon that other, less efficient groups don’t ever meet, you can expect players to feel rightfully frustrated. Remember, the players aren’t the adversaries of either the writer or the GM; they’re the audience.
The bonus encounter description should make it clear to the GM that it isn’t crucial that he include it in the adventure. The adventure should feel just as complete to the players whether they have the bonus encounter or not. Ideally, the players wouldn’t ever know that the GM threw in something special just for them.
Putting it All Together
Embracing these concepts can be tough. Many adventure writers firmly believe that more is better, and try to impress GMs with a wide range of encounters in a single adventure. Others take pride in writing adventures that he knows virtually no group can complete. However, the writer’s job isn’t to impress the GM or to “beat” the players, but rather to provide a fun experience for hundreds, even thousands of RPGA players. Sure it’s fun to boast about how many characters your adventure killed, but it’s much more fulfilling to hear the many players and GMs talk about how much fun they had playing your adventure.
That said, this column only provides you the framework upon which to build your adventure. Stop back in July, we’ll start fleshing out the skeleton and talk about ways to create a compelling, fun adventure.
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