So another scum and villainy question which could just as easily be a blades in the dark question really. So how many sessions make for a reasonably good time frame. I’ve heard 6 weeks before 8 10 12? What’s your personal experience? Our groups play different games so it needs a good solid end date.
So another scum and villainy question which could just as easily be a blades in the dark question really.
So another scum and villainy question which could just as easily be a blades in the dark question really.
My past games have been around 6 sessions each, which feels like the bare minimum for a satisfying narrative arc. I’d say 6-10 is the sweet spot for a really good “season” of play.
My group is probably an outlier, but we just hit session 82. There have been fairly regular breakpoints for “season” finales, at around 25 sessions. Granted this is on weeknights, where sometimes we’d only get 2-3 hours.
82 sessions! 0.o What tier is your crew at this point Ben Morgan??
They’re Tier 2, just about ready to go to Tier 3.
Yowza. Both of the campaigns I’ve run have seen the players make it to Tier 1 in 4-5 sessions. What do you think is the reason for your game’s leisurely pace? Seems like Tier 4 would be hard to avoid after 80+ sessions!
We’re not hammering the XP nearly as much as other groups I’ve seen reports on here. PCs earn an average of 2-3 XP a session. Additionally, we have all kept in mind that going up in Tier really represents a tremendous change in your gang’s relationship to the surrounding factions. In the case of the Porcelain Dolls, they were enjoying being big fish in a small pond for the time being.
I’m trying to bring our S&V game to a conclusion now, and we’ve had… um, six so far? I haven’t kept track. I’m trying to wrap it up, and I think it will take three more (nine total) to get to a nice conclusion of the story.
Parrish – it depends on how focused your group is on factions, and how much you as a GM want to encourage that. In general I don’t count by session (because my home groups are very focused, and we tend to do job->downtime->job in about 5 hours). But I count by jobs.
If you’re playing by the rules, and you start with a +2 faction, and you’re focused on just doing missions for them (and they remain available), you’d need 6 jobs and a capstone job to wrap up the campaign (so a min of 7 jobs).
On average I’ve seen folks start a bit spread out, take jobs for a bit till they find a strong consistent thread (or threat) they want to follow, align themselves in something big brewing, and follow it to conclusion. Most SaV campaigns have gone about a dozen sessions for us, so 13-18 jobs total.
If you have a group that can agree on which faction they want to align with early in the process you can probably put 10 games or so on the books and be solid. But I’ve seen games that meander, and are more about the mission and the personal lives of the crew than actually finishing on a schedule. The tools are there though for you to tune it as long you have buyin from your crew.
My first complete season I’ve run took 32 sessions, though we didn’t always do a score in each session (we only get to play for about 2-2.5 hours each time). Another currently in progress crew has run 11 jobs so far, as has one that I’m playing instead of running. Running a full season in 6-7 jobs seems extremely short to me, but I tend to run larger/grander story arcs as a personal thing.
Nihzlet – I completely agree. I’ve never seen a sub-10 job campaign, but it’s theoretically possible ^_~ It feels like there’s no room for the universe or the characters to breathe outside of one specific story, but it depends on the group.
I should clarify: the 6-session campaigns I’ve played feel like just enough to establish the characters and crew as entities in the world of Duskwall. In play, it feels way more like an origin story than a complete arc, but it’s got standalone potential all the same.
My one and only BitD campaign lasted about 7 sessions. Everyone seemed to love it but it did meander. It had no hard stop declared. I think I am gonna schedule 9. We have an end to work toward. Thanks for all the advice!