I want to see if I can make a campaign short enough to fit five to six sessions, preferably five, with about 3 hours each. What's a good format to plan it, with?
Five is tight but it can work. I’d make sure the players don’t expect to have a tremendous amount of time for character development. And you’re really going to have to manage the table well, without much time for side chatter. And at 3 hours, I would expect time for 1 fight, maybe 2 per session, but 2 will be tight.
I’d suggest looking into, believe it or not, Shakespeare. In particular, the structure of a 5-act play, which was really his jam: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement. Try googling 5-act play structure for more details on each of those segments.
If it's going to be only 5 sessions, you are operating under some of the same constraints as a tournament module - although they only have one session.
As in tournament modules, you're going to need a plot which is pretty tightly constrained; you just don't have time for the Players to go wandering off on side quests, or spending a lot of time sitting around talking to each other in Character.
A scenario where there's some tight time pressure could work here. Ideally some repeating and urgent time pressure: there's a deadline for the entire arc, but there's also a deadline for each session. In 5 sessions, this will happen and you need to stop it ( that's session #5 taken care of ), and how bad that final confrontation is will depend on how many times the Players succeed or fail in the previous 4 sessions. Maybe the bad guy is trying to gather the four McGuffins of Power, or eliminate the Four Guardians before they come into their power and can thwart his evil plan ( and who will aid the Party in the last battle, if they survive ).
Make each session self-contained, and under tight time constraints. Control the pacing of each sub-adventure by having the antagonists not stop, and clearly be making progress. It's a race to the goal each and every time.
That's just a way of setting it up. There are many others, I'm sure - but I think that one would work.
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First off, a 3 hour session really means a 2.5 to 2.75 hour session, as players settle in. If you are going to do this, plan for 12.5 hours of real play time.
Secondly, things ALWAYS take longer than the DM plans. That is just a fact.
If you have a single BBEG, or essentially one climatic scene planned, then plan it for session 4. If you see the players ripping through your material faster than you planned, it is easy enough to add vignettes that don't further the plot, but keep the players entertained. It is much much harder to tear out chunks of a plot once you are 2 or 3 sessions deep in to this campaign as opposed to adding stuff.
Like Vedexent writes you need to plot to be tightly constrained.
Effective ways to do this is having limited Locations to go/explore, and few NPC's to interact with. And time pressure like Vedexent writes, can also help.
An idea could also be like "in 3 days the world is going to end...unless you as a group do something about it". And session 1-2 will be day 1, session 2-3 will be day 2 etc. This can also help you control how many long rests a party can take. Making it easier to balance encounters up until the finale.
Compared to a campaign with no end date it will probably feel a bit like rail-roading the group. But you can still put in options like "do you want to explore location a,b or c , you know have time to do 2 of the 3".
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I want to see if I can make a campaign short enough to fit five to six sessions, preferably five, with about 3 hours each. What's a good format to plan it, with?
Five is tight but it can work. I’d make sure the players don’t expect to have a tremendous amount of time for character development. And you’re really going to have to manage the table well, without much time for side chatter. And at 3 hours, I would expect time for 1 fight, maybe 2 per session, but 2 will be tight.
I’d suggest looking into, believe it or not, Shakespeare. In particular, the structure of a 5-act play, which was really his jam: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement. Try googling 5-act play structure for more details on each of those segments.
If it's going to be only 5 sessions, you are operating under some of the same constraints as a tournament module - although they only have one session.
As in tournament modules, you're going to need a plot which is pretty tightly constrained; you just don't have time for the Players to go wandering off on side quests, or spending a lot of time sitting around talking to each other in Character.
A scenario where there's some tight time pressure could work here. Ideally some repeating and urgent time pressure: there's a deadline for the entire arc, but there's also a deadline for each session. In 5 sessions, this will happen and you need to stop it ( that's session #5 taken care of ), and how bad that final confrontation is will depend on how many times the Players succeed or fail in the previous 4 sessions. Maybe the bad guy is trying to gather the four McGuffins of Power, or eliminate the Four Guardians before they come into their power and can thwart his evil plan ( and who will aid the Party in the last battle, if they survive ).
Make each session self-contained, and under tight time constraints. Control the pacing of each sub-adventure by having the antagonists not stop, and clearly be making progress. It's a race to the goal each and every time.
That's just a way of setting it up. There are many others, I'm sure - but I think that one would work.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
First off, a 3 hour session really means a 2.5 to 2.75 hour session, as players settle in. If you are going to do this, plan for 12.5 hours of real play time.
Secondly, things ALWAYS take longer than the DM plans. That is just a fact.
If you have a single BBEG, or essentially one climatic scene planned, then plan it for session 4. If you see the players ripping through your material faster than you planned, it is easy enough to add vignettes that don't further the plot, but keep the players entertained. It is much much harder to tear out chunks of a plot once you are 2 or 3 sessions deep in to this campaign as opposed to adding stuff.
Like Vedexent writes you need to plot to be tightly constrained.
Effective ways to do this is having limited Locations to go/explore, and few NPC's to interact with. And time pressure like Vedexent writes, can also help.
An idea could also be like "in 3 days the world is going to end...unless you as a group do something about it". And session 1-2 will be day 1, session 2-3 will be day 2 etc. This can also help you control how many long rests a party can take. Making it easier to balance encounters up until the finale.
Compared to a campaign with no end date it will probably feel a bit like rail-roading the group. But you can still put in options like "do you want to explore location a,b or c , you know have time to do 2 of the 3".