One hour episodes/sessions?

[garethl]

Hello everyone!

You have half an hour for settling in and getting ready, one hour for actually playing, and possibly an half hour extra time at the end.

Seeing that the Doctor Who episodes are 45-minutes long, could DW:AiTaS sessions be one hour long? Dice rolling and player indecision might be a problem, but could you have an exciting adventure in only one hour actual play time? More importantly how?

Any pacing tips or advice?

[Craig Oxbrow]

Based on my experience running a TV-style game for years, an episode might be forty-five minutes but covering as much ground takes a typical group about three hours. And that's if they're pretty on the ball. The game itself is more the pace of writing an episode, which can take hours or even days.

Cut out most of the die rolling, and an hour could maybe cover about as much as half an episode.

To get much done, start in medias res - in the middle of things. They're already out of the TARDIS and running from the authorities, or sneaking onto the Dalek ship, or stuck in the sinking underwater colony.

[stahlman]

Golly no-a role playing session is usually a combination of a forensic examination of a situation combined with quite a lot of OOC interaction-if you take an episode and intersperse it with an episode of Dr Who confidential and then a matrix style replay of any combat scenes you may come up with a more realistic time analogy.

[da professor]

Three hours to an episode matches my experience too.

[brainsnaffler]

Absolutely about 3-4 hours. I am running each session as an "episode" and these are the times it takes.

Players as noted above, like to discuss courses of actions and how best to resolve a situation. To speed it up means to take some of that away from them and ultimately makes them feel railroaded.

In making 1 session = 1 episode, the plots are a little more linear than normal but my players are fine with that because they accept the format we are playing in and we want to work together to make the game feel as much like watching an episode of Dr Who as possible.

Tips I would suggest is preparing some handout notes to give the doctor explaining what he thinks the situation or certain things might be. This gives the players the feel that the Doctor knows what he's talking about (which he pretty much does all the time in the show), and speeds up endless debates about what things may or may not be. The player of the Doctor can obviously use his roleplaying expertise to make it seem that the conclusion has come to him slowly and find ways of intertwining it into his dialogue. Obviously, don't tell them everything because that would be rubbish for the player of the Doctor, its more like hints as to the path they should probably go down. I think it works well.

You can also hold them back if you think time is going a bit fast and only hand them out when they expend story points for assistance.

Hope this helps?

[Corone]

I've run a lot of 1 hour demo games,
which included time to settle everyone in.

The trick seems to be having a reasonable goal and a time limit.
If the players know they have to do something specific
(such as catch the monster or get to the bomb)
and that they have only a limited time to do it in,
they get their act together and things can run swiftly.

If any of you will be at the SFX weekender,
you'll have the oppotunity to play in one! :-)

[baradthedwarf]

Yes but that's a demo game, if you want to get playing regulary this seems very boring to do.

[garethl]

Thanks all!

To get much done, start in medias res - in the middle of things. They're already out of the TARDIS and running from the authorities, or sneaking onto the Dalek ship, or stuck in the sinking underwater colony.

In Medias Res, skipping the tedious pre-credits get out of the Tardis, where are we bit and get straight in the action, seems to be the only way to do one-hour sessions.

Players as noted above, like to discuss courses of actions and how best to resolve a situation. To speed it up means to take some of that away from them and ultimately makes them feel railroaded.

The trick seems to be having a reasonable goal and a time limit.

My thought was to continuously escalate. PCs are in a corridor. Players are indecisive: someone is taking the lift. Still indecisive: Lift opens, alien steps out. PCs flee/hide: indecisive/taking too long: fire-alarm goes off. Too much discussing: Window cleaning platform comes into view just outside the window. Party gets in and discus some more: alien deactivates the brakes. You get the picture! I am not telling them where to go or what to do (shut down the homemade fusion reactor in the building(yes they exist!)) but still keep the adventure going!

Golly no-a role playing session is usually a combination of a forensic examination of a situation combined with quite a lot of OOC interaction-if you take an episode and intersperse it with an episode of Dr Who confidential and then a matrix style replay of any combat scenes you may come up with a more realistic time analogy.

;D only with us combat is fast, deadly and brutal with the PCs only later realising what they just did. And after combat resolving everything into something we call an almost-everybody-but-certainly-all-good-persons-live(s) ending.