I like the current length of scenarios when I'm playing with two players who both know the game well and can play quickly, or when playing with my girlfriend where we can just leave it on the table for tomorrow night. When playing in a bigger group though, with newer/slower players, and trying to fit in a scenario in a reasonable weeknight game night, this game is just way too long. I know FF is mostly into cultivating their more hardcore fanbase, but to make it more accessible for others, a shorter scenario time would be quite helpful.

So I'd like some tips: how best to shorten scenarios? The most obvious way to me is to add a little extra doom at the start and somehow get rid of certain objectives. If anyone has a better idea though I'm very interested.

The Gathering is mercifully short but it's still too long when playing with brand new players. I'm hesitant though to modify the rules though because it may confuse brand new players. So I may just leave this one.

Midnight masks. I'm thinking of adding 2 doom to the starting agenda, and taking out 1 cultist, and I think giving us free XP credit for the kill but maybe not. Maybe even add 3-4 doom and take out 2 cultists, that would be a better length.

The Devourer Below. It's a tough scenario and you don't have much time as is. I'm thinking of adding 1 doom and changing the number of clues required to advance into the first act from 3 clues per investigator to 2 clues per investigator.

Will think about Dunwich later.

There are some scenarios where this just will be hard to do.

I recognize that this kind of balancing is imperfect, especially as it regards damage and horror because you have a shorter scenario so you can afford to take more damage, but just trying anything I can think of to be able to play this game with more people.

Why not just play the one off scenarios (Rougarou or Carnevale) to help your group get used to the game before diving into a campaign. Obviously you can do whatever you want to try and shorten it but i think it will take away from the experience as a whole. The game is very well designed and has tight mechanics that adjusting could make it unfair or less enjoyable.

Just my two cents.

I don't think the standalones are a good choice if you're concerned about time - they're both long scenarios, especially with large groups.

I wouldn't just try adding doom. It's going to make the scenario dramatically harder. Especially if you're running a teaching game, it would be better to just treat the "per investigator" clue requirements as one or two less than the actual number of players you've got. This would obviously make the scenario a lot easier, but that may not be bad for a teaching game. You could compensate for that by playing on Hard if you really want to keep the challenging feel.

How long are these scenarios taking you? I routinely play with 3-4 players and it never takes more than a couple of hours. Generally it takes less. It would help to know how your game nights are structured. When do you meet? How long do you play for? Do you take frequent breaks? Is there a dinner break? It could just be that the structure of your evening needs a tweak.

For weeknights, we tend to meet around 6pm, have dinner knocked out by 7pm or so and then start the game. That gives us 3 hours, enough to wrap up around 10pm. For longer games, we generally order pizza or similar... something that people can eat in between taking turns.

I Cast, Thread Necro!

One of the best way's to shorten this game is to use the very nicely themed Arkham LCG 3rd party App!

It shaves 10-30 seconds off of every skill test, of which you make dozens over each and every scenario. I find that you make on average 1,5 skill tests per round, the average map is what? 10 rounds? In a 2 player game that makes for an average of 1 minute less time per round, 2 minutes in 4 player, a 10 round scenario would therefore be shortened by 20 minutes just by having everyone bring their phone, the app also has the spread of tokens and token effects readily visible so that saves time thinking and browsing. It has the setup and scenario results too and book-keeps the XP.

In other words, If you play three or four scenarios in a row in a 4 player game, you can expect the app to save you an hour or so.

10 hours ago, tsuruki said:

I Cast, Thread Necro!

One of the best way's to shorten this game is to use the very nicely themed Arkham LCG 3rd party App!

It shaves 10-30 seconds off of every skill test, of which you make dozens over each and every scenario. I find that you make on average 1,5 skill tests per round, the average map is what? 10 rounds? In a 2 player game that makes for an average of 1 minute less time per round, 2 minutes in 4 player, a 10 round scenario would therefore be shortened by 20 minutes just by having everyone bring their phone, the app also has the spread of tokens and token effects readily visible so that saves time thinking and browsing. It has the setup and scenario results too and book-keeps the XP.

In other words, If you play three or four scenarios in a row in a 4 player game, you can expect the app to save you an hour or so.

If it's taking you 10-30 seconds to perform a skill test, you're doing something wrong. I keep my tokens in a small bag. Reaching in, pulling one out and looking at it takes maybe 2-3 seconds tops. 30 seconds is a LONG time. I'll grant you that some of these apps have nice features, but shortening a skill test by 30 seconds is not one of them. If anything, my group found that using an app for skill tests was a bit annoying as our phones would keep going to sleep between rounds. Having to wake our phones up each time we wanted to take a skill test actually added to the overall time.

Perhaps we do take long, we do shake the baggies properly tho so each token is an absolute minimum of 10 secs to draw