I'm trying to design a prison break campaign for three friends and want it to last around 2-3 hours. Right now I have 3-4 encounters planned out (depending on their choices), plus a trap and a puzzle toward the end. There will be a little RP between the encounters, especially earlier on. Does it seem like I'm in the right ballpark? This is my first home brew and I'm finding it difficult to estimate these things. I know part of it will be my PCs.
Wow, that few? I have two fights that are fairly important to the story, so maybe I'll just stick to those. A third is a quasi-fight, but should hopefully be more of a fun and quick "kill all these minions" kind of thing. I'll take out the rest.
Most published adventure that are meant for two hour play generally have some sort of social encounter, a trap or puzzle encounter, and one or two combat encounters. Combat encounters can take up a lot of time depending on how the dice roll.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
For my home campaign I prepped 8 encounters. One was a skill challenge in a bar brawl. Didn't last long and was just to add on something fun. Only ended up using 5 encounters because the players went a different direction.
So maybe plan for more then take them out of they are not needed and the flow of the game warrants it. Of course if players are blowing through content then having a spare encounter doesn't hurt. Much like an attack on a road to a town. Can be used or skipped entirely.
Basically every encounter will probably take at least half an hour and your PCs will probably spend 30 minutes exploring towns for NPCs and/or interrogating NPCs (and possibly picking fights you didnt plan for). There is also the very real possibility that they will nope out of an encounter...
Well, the setting is a prison and they're the prisoners. They'll have choices to make but it's not going to be like a town where they can just wander around. Also there really won't be any nope-ing out of the two encounters I have planned. :)
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DM - Above & Below
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I'm trying to design a prison break campaign for three friends and want it to last around 2-3 hours. Right now I have 3-4 encounters planned out (depending on their choices), plus a trap and a puzzle toward the end. There will be a little RP between the encounters, especially earlier on. Does it seem like I'm in the right ballpark? This is my first home brew and I'm finding it difficult to estimate these things. I know part of it will be my PCs.
Thanks for any insight!
DM - Above & Below
I'd cut the monster encounters down to 1-2 fights.
Wow, that few? I have two fights that are fairly important to the story, so maybe I'll just stick to those. A third is a quasi-fight, but should hopefully be more of a fun and quick "kill all these minions" kind of thing. I'll take out the rest.
DM - Above & Below
Most published adventure that are meant for two hour play generally have some sort of social encounter, a trap or puzzle encounter, and one or two combat encounters. Combat encounters can take up a lot of time depending on how the dice roll.
For my home campaign I prepped 8 encounters. One was a skill challenge in a bar brawl. Didn't last long and was just to add on something fun. Only ended up using 5 encounters because the players went a different direction.
So maybe plan for more then take them out of they are not needed and the flow of the game warrants it. Of course if players are blowing through content then having a spare encounter doesn't hurt. Much like an attack on a road to a town. Can be used or skipped entirely.
All up to you really.
Basically every encounter will probably take at least half an hour and your PCs will probably spend 30 minutes exploring towns for NPCs and/or interrogating NPCs (and possibly picking fights you didnt plan for). There is also the very real possibility that they will nope out of an encounter...
Well, the setting is a prison and they're the prisoners. They'll have choices to make but it's not going to be like a town where they can just wander around. Also there really won't be any nope-ing out of the two encounters I have planned. :)
DM - Above & Below