Does anyone else feel like the published adventures aren't long enough? One would imagine that each adventure would have the same scope as a movie. But they seem to be geared more as "TV episodes". Compared to D&D APs they seem quite short and not particularly epic

Note: I'm talking about EotE here - I've not looked at the other lines, but they seem to be of a similar length.

Am I thinking about it wrong?

I'm not sure if my GM padded them or not but the couple he ran spanned multiple sessions so they seemed fine to me.

Beyond the Rim lasted me 7 sessions, at 4 hrs per session. Jewel looks like it would be about the same. The Pirate Queen looks the shortest to me, but Im sure that I could nurse about 6, from that also now I'm more experienced as a Gm in the system .

Does anyone else feel like the published adventures aren't long enough? One would imagine that each adventure would have the same scope as a movie. But they seem to be geared more as "TV episodes". Compared to D&D APs they seem quite short and not particularly epic

Note: I'm talking about EotE here - I've not looked at the other lines, but they seem to be of a similar length.

Am I thinking about it wrong?

The adventures in this system do appear to be set up as "skeletons" for the GM to add "meat" to in order to make it more satisfying for the group. Aside from when I'm playtesting, I never run these things straight from the book. There's always some idea or another that the adventure stimulates me to just add in and run with.

A typical D&D AP can easily last a year of weekly sessions so 7 seems a bit light.

I guess looking at them as skeletons is interesting. I'm going to stitch the 3 APs together for a long run through but then it'll be down to me after that (unless we switch to AoR and then FaD of course).

Perhaps by the end of that there'll be more APs out for EotE?

A typical D&D AP can easily last a year of weekly sessions so 7 seems a bit light.

I guess looking at them as skeletons is interesting. I'm going to stitch the 3 APs together for a long run through but then it'll be down to me after that (unless we switch to AoR and then FaD of course).

Perhaps by the end of that there'll be more APs out for EotE?

Which D&D adventure paths are you speaking about here? I played D&D for a long time, and most D&D adventures were done in well under a year of weekly playing.

To be fair, the Star Wars adventures are all 96 page books, aren't they? The only "APs" I know of are Paizo's adventure paths, and those are made up of a half-dozen 50-60 page adventures (with another 40-50 pages of additional content). That's 300+ pages of adventure, vs the Star Wars books 96 pages - of course the latter aren't going to last as long.

WotC's 5e adventures are either ~250 pages (Curse of Strahd, Rage of the Abyss, Princes of the Apocalypse) or 96 pages (Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Rise of Tiamat), if I Google correctly. I haven't run or played any of them, so I'm not sure how they'd compare.

Also adventures are the the thing that sells the least. Only the gm typically buys them. So it does not make sense to invest a huge amount in them. We are lucky to get what we are getting.

Also adventures are the the thing that sells the least. Only the gm typically buys them. So it does not make sense to invest a huge amount in them. We are lucky to get what we are getting.

Or it makes sense to put PC Mando rules in them to get players to buy a book they might otherwise take a pass on.

The value of the adventures goes beyond the adventure. Species, equipment, planets, set pieces to be used elsewhere. Seems to me FFG has created product that goes beyond the basic adventure. This is awesome. But these books are not adventure paths or campaign books in the vein of Paizo AP series or WotC's adventure campaigns.

I've been gaming for more than 30 years (holy **** am I that old now?!) and a published adventure lasting for a year of weekly sessions seems like an anomaly to me. That doesn't sound like a standard published adventure to me. I think you've set the bar way to high here.

The 5e ones are Fairly large In terms of xp too. Between the first 2 (Tyranny of Dragons and Rage of Tiamat) they are designed to take you the first 15 levels (Out of 20).

Personally I've found a lot of the actual adventures to be a bit lacking - and often making some pretty wild assumptions about what the PCs would decide to do. However, I agree with mouthymerc - the value of these books is everything else that comes in them. Extra rules, extra gear, NPCs, etc.

Thanks for the considered replies everyone. I don't have a lot of time to prepare adventures so getting help from premade ones is essential. The prospect of sustaining a long running adventure that's interesting and fun and coming from my head is quite daunting.

Agreed that the adventure modules are not where the money is. I guess FFG is smart to provide additional content that players will want to collect, as there's more of them.

Does anyone else feel like the published adventures aren't long enough? One would imagine that each adventure would have the same scope as a movie. But they seem to be geared more as "TV episodes". Compared to D&D APs they seem quite short and not particularly epic

The canned games we've done JoY, Beyond and the Holochron one - and they've all lasted 4 or 5 sessions (each one lasting about 4-6 hours). The flip side, I'm going back through some of the old WEG canned games to strip mine for ideas, and I'm consistantly shocked on how really short they are.

So yeah, it's you.

A typical D&D AP can easily last a year of weekly sessions so 7 seems a bit light.

D&D/ Pathfinder takes between 30 minutes and an hour to resolve a single combat encounter. I've sat through D&D dungeon fights that took the entire evening. An FFG SW combat encounter is done in three-to-five rolls of the dice. D&D modules are 75% pre-scripted combat encounters. FFG SW scenarios are 75% situational and character conflict issues. They're completely different animals.

The FFG SW scenarios generally take around 12 hours to complete at four hours per chapter. Four hours is the typical length of a convention game which is an industry standard metric.

I ran Perlemian Haul, Lessons of the past, That one from F&D gamemaster screen and they all took one session (about 6-8h)

Trouble Brewing and Glare peak took 2 sessions. Beyond the rim lasted 4 or 5 sessions.

I personally like that they are so short since i would get bored playing one story in half a year. Maybe because i ran my games in TV series format. When every session or two are complete story then i move to the next one.

Also i treat adventure books as a good sketch then i add my own elements so i want them to be fairly short and not overly complicated. And those books give me people, places that i can use in my future games so they are ok to me.

(...) adventures (...) often making some pretty wild assumptions about what the PCs would decide to do.

I second that. Especially in BtR

I tend to run long extended adventures with episodic breaks to change things up from time to time. Too long on a narrow path tends to be counterproductive and loses the players' and the GM's interest. Not every session has to be devoted to the Big Plot.

We're on 8th session for beyond the rim, but I do think we're getting close to the end.

As for FFG encouraging players to buy the adventures by tucking new equipment and rules, I can't say I'm a fan. As a GM, I'd like to keep the adventure material out of the player's hands. Perhaps PDF's are the answer. I've heard that they can't publish pdf's of the rules due to the license, but They do publish follow on adventures for each of the beginner games. I wonder if adventures fall under a different category than rules, giving them more leeway to use electronic media.

As for FFG encouraging players to buy the adventures by tucking new equipment and rules, I can't say I'm a fan. As a GM, I'd like to keep the adventure material out of the player's hands.

If you trust your players, you can tell them not to look at those parts.

Perhaps PDF's are the answer. I've heard that they can't publish pdf's of the rules due to the license, but They do publish follow on adventures for each of the beginner games. I wonder if adventures fall under a different category than rules, giving them more leeway to use electronic media.

If you look at the PDFs that have been made available so far, they are very limited in what they provide. Much less variety in these PDFs than are in the Beginners Games or in the other published adventures.

IMO, the license that FFG has with LFL/Disney is the killer here. You’re just not going to see useful official PDFs for anything beyond the kind of thing you’ve seen already. There’s no sense crying over bloo milk that will never exist in the first place, much less be able to be spilled.

It could be that they cannot SELL pdfs of Star wars. So the free follow on stuff does not violate that. Small things would be free (follow ons as part of Beginners development) but anything large would not be worth developing as they would have to charge.

I have understood that in this case selling any electronic material (PDFs) goes under electronic gaming licence, which is owned by EA, and RPG licence was made in time when there was no electronic distribution of book, so it only covers actual paper prints.

Disclaimer: I have no actual hard knowledge of FFG or star wars licencing, and everything I wrote above is deduced from what I have read from internet and heard in podcasts. So I may be wildly incorrect.

But back to topic. Only FFG SW adventure I own is the Mask of the pirate queen, and I was kind of surprised how brief it was. I'd like to have much larger official campaign module. But I think that MPQ scope is kind of good to me, because I could probably GM it in one sessions (i.e. one weekend) with my regular group. So, I at least partially agree, published adventures could be a bit larger.

Maybe one reason for apparent shortness of modules is that in this system it is harder to write long campaigns. And because longer modules are often more railroaded than what works in this system. I'm currently playing as PC in Pathfinder campaign Rise of the Runelords, and it's apparent that it's going on fairly strongly on rails, and PCs don't actually have much agency in campaign. Either we succeed the encounter or fail. After success, we head to next encounter. That's not a style I particularly enjoy. And longer, more free campaigns are harder to write.

I actually love @swrpgadventures in twitter, because it gives a shorter adventure seeds which can lead to long campaigns.

It sounds like this thread has had very different experiences with the modules from me. Running BtR, my group sat for three 6ish hour sessions and barely got through act 2. JoY is a bit muddier because there was a LOT of planning via email between sessions, but time at the table was around six 3-ish hour sessions and again, they only got through act 2. (Both of these were ran as short games where IRL stuff precluded them from finishing.) Currently, MotPQ has done four 3.5-ish hour sessions and I estimate 2 more before finishing act 1. (The first 2 were with veteran players, the last has only been RPing for 5 months.)

Regarding published adventure-lengths by FFG:

* Free PDFs tease just enough content for a beginning GM in this system, but almost need the original adventures to fully make sense of the plots.

* I bought and am playing Beyond the Rim because Sterling Hershey wrote it. I consider it patronage and support of him.

* Given as I like Seekers, who have an affinity for piloting and animals, these adversaries in above-named game also interested me. I have a stake in seeing this game succeed.

* I get MUCH more mileage out of sector/location books, like LoNH and SoF. The extra crunch offered in those books helps me establish a firm setting, and give players unique rewards from those books.

I am interested in Friends like These because it offers some crunch in its NPCs. The introspection on Mando culture is fluff to me, and I don't expect that we'll get everything of yummy Fett goodness until the Bounty Hunter splatbook, maybe in a few months/years from now.