Hi Folks,

I thought I'd share my experiences from the scenario I ran at Endgame Oakland's MiniCon yesterday.

I decided to challenge myself a bit and write a mystery-genre scenario based in Marienburg (having recently acquired a mint copy of the excellent 1E sourcebook, Marienburg: Sold Down the River) that I titled Three Penny Bridge.

This allowed me to really play more with social and interactive challenges much more than the combative variety. In short: it worked quite well. There were plenty of action cards and skills that worked well in negotiation, influence, and problem solving encounters, so all the players felt just as involved as they have in my more "action" oriented games.

On key indicator that I was on the right track was that I had a 10-year-old player that I carefully watched as my boredom "canary in the mine," and he stayed engaged the entire game.

So, the good:

• The social "combat" system works well
• Players love it when you act out the NPCs with individual mannerisms and voices
• The setting supported a mystery scenario quite well

...and the bad:

• I thought I had 5 hours, and paced accordingly, but really only had 4. Thus I had to rush a bit in the second half.
• What!? No bridge location card? I'll need to remedy that.
• My scenario had one too many twists, which thankfully I was able to remove on the fly, so no harm done (rewriting now...)

Cheers.

Thanks for sharing your experience! I didn't get to run at the last con I attended as I had anticipated (too little time!), but may run for another con in my area soon. Any suggestions/hints about running a quick scenario for entirely new players?

Schoon,

Why don't you write it up and upload it to the Hammerzeit site?

jh

(p.s. you could also email it to me and I could format it for you too..there's a template on my gallery page (see my sig)

I'll second that emotion: Hammerzeit, poor little stepchild that she is, desperately needs your adventure! If you are feeling pressed, I bet there would even be help available to make it look pretty.

Sure. I can do that. Thanks for the offer of formatting as well!