What we learned again tonight

[james_davis_nicoll]

There is no one session adventure that will not stretch into five sessions given Waterloo gamers....

Comments

[brithistorian]

I think you could have just ended that sentence after the word "adventure," or maybe "stretch." Estimating the time an adventure will take seems to be a perfect spot for application of Hofstadter's Law.

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, you appear to have a superfluous word between "given" and "gamers".

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

I am so reassured to know that it is not just us.

[cmattg.livejournal.com]

Any GM who doesn't have "No plan survives contact with the PCs" at the top of their things-to-remember list is either A) very inexperienced or II) not paying attention.

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Waterloo gamers?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The rping group I've belonged to since the mid-1980s.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

You started gaming earlier, though, didn't you? I know Brian was playing D&D in 1979; I tried it in 1980, but didn't really get into it until Champions in 1983. Jim ran that, but I suspect he had gamed elsewhere before, too.

Of course, that's my memory, so it's suspect...

[kuritzky.livejournal.com]

Did you have five sessions worth of fun?

[mr-mediocre.livejournal.com]

We learned back in 1979 that a D&D session always takes an hour longer than you have available. This applied regardless of whether you were attempting a 2-hour session on a Tuesday night or a round-the-clock game from Saturday to Sunday.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Breakout is supposed to be a one or two session event—it's the introductory "mini-event" in the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying book.

We did the first act in one night, which is reasonable, considering that it was (a) a lot of combat and (b) our first time with the system.

So last night we started the second act, which should take about the same amount of time--more combats but smaller, and I was concerned that I had skipped some of the roleplaying opportunities, so I made sure there was one, planted a big giant clue for later, and figured we'd get on with it. Maybe we wouldn't get to the rogue SHIELD agents, but we'd at least get to fighting the dinosaurs and probably fight the Savage Land mutates.

And the players have paid to take the Sentry with them and they kinda want him stable, so they figure best to show him his wife is still alive (the whole reason for Foggy Nelson and Luke Cage being there in the first act). They can just stop off on their way to Antarctica...

Well, it was the beginning of the act, the doom pool was small (2D6) and the Void (Sentry's bad guy) uses the doom pool. I figured it was safe to have the Void show up.

I would just like to say that as written, the Void is a huge complication when he shows up. Boy, that Doom Pool grew fast, and I was wrong about that safety thing.

So maybe we'll finish it next time. Or the time after that. Or—

(On the plus side: Emma Frost is darn useful; Hank McCoy designs good aircraft; webbing up an opponent works very nicely; and Ms. Marvel sure can headbutt.)