Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[Stan Shinn]

What do you think are good tips in structuring home games so they start and finish in 4 hours and allow you to be episodic?

After struggling with the woes of rotating players I've come to the conclusion that the best way to manage my group of players is to have each four-hour session be episodic -- 4 hour con-style games with a clear ending, then a return to home base (or something equivalent) allowing for a slightly different set of heroes / players next time. Think Pathfinder Society, Living Forgotten Realms, etc. (if you've played any of those). Maybe you connect the episodes with a story arc, but generally you plan for player changes from game to game. I do like Sandbox style play, but I feel I have to add at least some structure to deal with the rotating player situation.

Here are some tips I've compiled, plus some of my experience at Con games, and some ideas from other systems:

1) Have 4 to 6 scenes or 'encounters' planned. Have at least one of these (maybe the 5th) be optional. If you're running short on time, skip this encounter. (Is this about right in your experience?)

2) Have the first 2 or 2.5 hours be roleplaying oriented -- investigation, travel, scoping the compound, etc. Then have some excuse to trigger the final act -- maybe the bad guys attack, or the villain relocates the kidnapped girl giving you the chance to strike. You as the GM pull this trigger no later than 1.5 hours before the 4 hour session ends, so as to leave sufficient time for the conflicts in the final act and the big, bad, boss battle at the end.

3) Alternatively, flip it and have the big battle at the beginning, and take as long as you want for the boss fight. Then roleplay for the remainder of the time. Have some short encounters with NPCs planned. (This is how Mouseguard does it -- you have a mission, you go do it and have the big battle, then you return to town and let the players roleplay until time is up).

4) Alternate between methods 2 & 3 above so the story structure doesn't get stale.

5) Move the characters around by having scenes in different locations. Just having some of the scenes be in a different location moves the story forward and gives opportunities for Hindrances, NPCs encounters and so forth.

What do you think of these tips? Are there other ideas about how to keep it episodic and deal with the rotating players situation in home games?

[Bavix]

My favorite way to handle episodic play is to have all the characters be part of the same organization, or at least affiliated organizations. That way it's much easier to pull players out and have other drop in.

I ran a long D&D campaign where the PCs were all Greyhawk City Nightwatchmen. If a player couldn't make it that night, that just meant that their superiors sent her to a different quarter of the city or on a "special" mission. It also helps to have the campaign be more urban based so the characters are always close. It's easier to bring in characters if the adventure is only a few blocks away.
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[Stan Shinn]

[Virgobrown72]

I like a combination of 1 & 5...
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"Anything smaller is just fiddly, and fiddly is not one of SvgW's three Fs..."

[RenoGM]

Being part of the same organization or unit really helps, I use this concept for nearly all my Convention games. Give the heroes an NPC "boss" who can give them orders or assignments.

Don't waste time with lengthy "openings". Jump right into the adventure. I sometimes even start in the middle. For example you could kick things off with, "After a lengthy investigation you and your allies have tracked the baron's murderer to the Ebon Tower. The guards on the outer gate lie dead at your feat but the sound of an alarm echoes in the night." You can reveal additional details of the lead-up/backstory through the action and dialogue.

Something else I do as far as mechanics go, don't waste time with a lot of Notice rolls or Knowledge rolls. Just tell the players what the observe and what they know, it's much faster and tends to get the players to act rather than over analyzing and looking for more info.

Use some concepts that televison shows use; like moving the plot forward during the "commercial break", there's no need to roleplay out every second of the episode in "real-time". Also think of the pacing of a show; almost every hour long show breaks the episode up the same way: quick intro followed by a fairly long build-up scene, followed by a series of increasingly shorter but more intense scenes, and capped-off with a fairly lengthy climax scene, and a final very brief wrap-up.

Hope that helps.

[Zadmar]

I favour the organisation approach as well, although my players don't like being issued orders by a boss figure.

One campaign I ran that worked quite well was a modern dark fantasy setting, where (in the first adventure) someone/something had been killing supernatural beings. The various supernatural factions throughout the city distrusted each other and refused to work with each other directly, but as they were all being targeted they reached a compromise; they jointly sponsored the formation of an investigative organistion consisting of the PCs - one member of each major supernatural faction. The idea was that each member had contacts and influence among their own faction, and could decide what information needed to be shared.

The group proved very effective, so the various factions agreed to continue sponsoring it. The result was an independently run organisation that took on whatever jobs they felt were appropriate. Instead of being given orders by a boss, they received tips from contacts, phone calls from potential clients, spotted unusual activities in news reports, etc. The end result was the same, but the players felt that they were in control rather than being forced to follow orders.

And of course if a player couldn't make it to a session, it just meant their character was on a separate job.

[77IM]

I ran a campaign like this for a good while and came up with a guideline called "clear goals, fluid obstacles."

1) Clear Goals: Don't let the party waste valuable time waffling about what they want to do or being confused about what they should do. Explicitly spell out what exactly they are trying to accomplish. Make it something concrete, understandable, and doable within the time-frame of the adventure.

2) Obstacles: There's a whole bunch of crap standing between the PCs and achieving their goal -- hostile or rival NPCs, difficult terrain, thick stone walls.
a) It's up to the PCs how to get around these obstacles. The GM doesn't care how they do it. Fight the NPCs, or bribe them, or poison them, whatever. The GM has enough to worry about when planning and running the adventure to also worry about how the PCs intend to succeed. That said, the obstacles can't ever seem impossible, either to the GM or the players.
b) A very special obstacle is Mystery, the unknown, the missing information required to achieve the goal. Often the goal itself is discovering something, like solving a mystery. In this case, the GM very much SHOULD plan ahead for several ways the PCs might figure out the missing information. Otherwise, there's a risk of the game getting "stuck" if the PCs don't know where to look next. This is very different than a visible obstacle (2a, above), where the PCs can just try different approaches until they succeed.

3) Fluid Obstacles: For pacing reasons, you can add or remove obstacles Basically, if the PCs are whizzing past the obstacles, a few new challenges crop up. Or, if they are lagging behind and you want to wrap it up, then you remove some of the later obstacles. This is easiest if the obstacles were secret to begin with, but even a highly visible obstacle can be removed by having the players conveniently find some easy way to circumvent it.

So when planning an adventure in this style, I come up with a goal and some general, high-level obstacles, and then some more specific mini-obstacles. I come up with more than what I need, although it's hard to put a number on this, because each adventure is different. I don't plan out any encounters -- just obstacles.

-- 77IM
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Stuff I made: Arcane Abilities · Talent Edge · Savage Fading Suns · Savage Wuxia!

[Pariah74]

Great advice already.

The only thing I would add is to make the players run at your pace, and not theirs. Meaning, gently but firmly clamp down on chit-chat and other distractions.

If you control the clock, you control he pacing. When players talk too much, hem and haw over decisions, or start tinkering with electronic devices (as players tend to do) they can eat up valuable time.

Sometimes when I GM a campaign I let them meander and chit chat, it is a social event after all, but if you're running an episodic game and you need a start, middle and climax you gently remind them of this and then start cracking the whip...with a smile.

One rule I have now and then, is that using a phone costs a benny. Texting, answering, etc are rude IMO, and I don't ever feel bad reaching over and taking a benny from a player who is doing something like that.
Not that it happens a lot, hardly at all anymore but I have had players that have had me shopping around for these.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/personal-cell-phone-signal-blocker-device-4355

Anyway, I digress...good players understand. Tell them the nature of the game and ask for decisive actions and low amounts of table talk and then get it from them. Oh and on your end. Don't stop to look up rules. Just make rules and keep moving. Look it up later. Don't open books at the table. Just keep it going. Running at a break neck speed can be fun sometimes!
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"Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game. "
~Gygax

[Stan Shinn]

[farik]

It's really just an expansion of the unifying organization suggestion but I've found "military" games are great for episodic play. You avoid lengthy discussions about equipment and transportation, you have clear mission objectives, and you can breeze through exposition by starting with a mission briefing. This applies to military games ranging from fantasy to sci-fi and everything in between.

I'll admit it can be hard to handle some types of stories like mysteries but I find Mysteries are hard to keep episodic in general since by nature they require more room for exploration.

[scourger]

For my episodic campaigns, I start with a general story. The outcome is not determined, but there is a big story in which the heroes are involved and influential. Then, the episodes evolve in reaction to the heroes' actions.

A military campaign works great for the reasons mentioned above. Each episode has a story phase and an action phase. The action phase is combat, and one encounter is usually enough. If time remains, there can be a wind-up phase or it can be continued next session.

[Timon]

There is some superb advice above. I think that the clear goals and fluid obstacles approach is good for any kind of session, but you will need to state the goals explicitly for maximum effectiveness.

One way to do this is to have a formal briefing - which fits with an agency/military mission-based game.

You can also generate goals as the climax of the previous session: my last game centred around fixing the engines of the plummeting Dwarven skyship the characters were on. That was pretty clear when the previous session ended "You have beaten back the attackers from the bridge, but suddenly the engines fall silent and the skyship goes into a steep dive".

Even if one or other of your players was not present at the previous session, you are going to surface those goals easily in the recap round: I always start my sessions by going round the table and getting the players to recap what happened. The best description gets a Benny.
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Biting! It's like kissing but there's a winner!
The Doctor's Wife

[77IM]

[farik]

[Timon]

It just occurred to me that the Temporal Probability Agency setting is superb for this kind of play. It has a mission-running structure with enough wiggle room that you can play pretty much any kind of adventure. It is very nicely crafted, low prep and they supply lots of handouts, highly recommended.
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Biting! It's like kissing but there's a winner!
The Doctor's Wife