One thing I have been wondering is how much expected to happen in a typical session. Now, I know the xp award section of the GM's chapter does give a rough estimate of how many encounters, but as definition of what a "major" encounter is a very subjective one, I think a note on how long the included adventure is expected to take would be a more useful indicator of expected character progression (especially if you are looking to downscale or upscale xp rewards to take account of actual play time)

So, how long is this adventure expected to take? Now, I know it is going to be different for every group (and how much dithering they do, or how thorough they are with all the possibilities), but was the intention that each episode would take a session, or was the entire adventure expected to be over in a session (or something else)?

I think part of the issue is the use of "episode". If I use episode in an RPG context I tend to mean a full adventure, ie a self contained story like a TV episode (I think this comes from the Buffy RPG, which uses TV terminology to illustrate plot structure, for obvious reasons), but in this it is used more along the lines of an "Act" of a story. However, to me it feels at least some of them are likely to be a thin for a whole 4 hour session, but the whole adventure feels like it would be a bit rushed (or at least very intense) done in a single session.

For my group, it took 2 sessions of about 3 hours each to get through the adventure, but then I changed plenty in the first half and simply let them go about finding information based upon the players' suggestions rather than what the book had. That and they did a solid job of talking down the hunters rather than fighting them.

Cool. After having the first actual play session that is the conclusion I am reaching too. It feels like a 2 session adventure, though not necessarily with the most obvious break point (but I would guess either before the encounter with the hunters (to serve as a cliff-hanger) or after (so the encounter can serve as the climax of the session).

Obviously this all depends on how long that encounter goes...

I'm going to be running this for a series of one off store demos. If I remove Episode 2 and speed through some of the nonsense at the start (it's a very slow start and rather tedious), can I reasonably get through this in a few hours? Or will I have to hack and slash to fit a demo format? I was thinking of only running the last part, but I don't want it to just be a big half combat (since you don't actually fight the spirit directly) and leave the non-combatants with nothing to do.

I'm going to be running this for a series of one off store demos. If I remove Episode 2 and speed through some of the nonsense at the start (it's a very slow start and rather tedious), can I reasonably get through this in a few hours? Or will I have to hack and slash to fit a demo format? I was thinking of only running the last part, but I don't want it to just be a big half combat (since you don't actually fight the spirit directly) and leave the non-combatants with nothing to do.

Concerning the 'nonsense at the start', that is part of the reason why I changed how the PCs will become involved in the adventure through a mistaken identity hook. I pray it works out well.

Took us about 5 hours.

Concerning the 'nonsense at the start', that is part of the reason why I changed how the PCs will become involved in the adventure through a mistaken identity hook. I pray it works out well.

Care to share? Would love to hear how this worked out if you had the chance to implement it!