Questions about Caravan to Ein Arris from a brand new GM

[jneedler]

Hi everybody, I've played plenty of RPGs (including GURPS) and am finally taking the plunge in GM'ing. I have offered to run Caravan to Ein Arris for some friends as a mini-campaign.

I am sure that I will have plenty of questions in the future, and many thanks in advance for your well-considered words of wisdom, but for now, my question is fairly straight-forward:

About how many sessions will it take to run the Caravan to Ein Arris campaign? I don't plan to follow a strict session timeline (I will let them wander and muck about), so the exact number of sessions is not terribly important, but I'd like to give the players a reasonable estimate up front. Based on my reading of the PDF, my initial guess is 4-5 sessions ... does that sound reasonable?

Pertinent factors: I'm assuming play sessions will be about 3 hours. I don't know yet exactly how many players we will have, but I'm guessing 4-5.

Have you played it/GM'd it? How many 3 hour sessions did it take you? And do you feel like it could have been more enjoyable if it was shorter/longer?

Thanks!

[DanHoward]

I've played it twice. The first time was in the late eighties when I was learning about GURPS - it only took one day. The second time I created an entire campaign around it and it lasted about six months. In order to do this I created an additional location from which all the action could happen. It ended up getting written up for Pyramid.

Return to Ein Arris
http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-2652

[jneedler]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

it only took one day

Thanks!

Are you saying that you played this in a single, 3-4 hour session? Or was it an all day, 10 hour long marathon?

I'll be sure to take a look at that issue.

[DanHoward]

9-10 hours including breaks, distractions, and digressions.

[sir_pudding]

I ran it in High School during lunch. I don't recall it taking very long at all, but that was 25+ years ago. Maybe three or so two-ish hour sessions.

[Ultraviolet]

I played it once, a good friend who introduced me to GURPS ran it some 25 years back when we were still new to GURPS and fairly new to rpg.

We were 3 players and it took a single session of 6-7 hours IIRC.

I think the main question is: How long do you want it to last?
I mean the scenario is basically a mini-campaign. Depending on how likely the players are to go off script and anf how the Gm handles improv.

Mind you, coordinate with characters better than we did!
We weren't big on specific settings back then, we just played generic fantasy. Our characters were created at whim with no specific game in mind. So when we were playing that scenario big on desert survival and animal handling we had a huge challenge. With a GM understanding the mechanics of the game we simply calculated defaults for all those skills, including the languages!
In retroscpect this was suboptimal, however I had no recollection of this holding us back.
So have players generate characters relevant to the setting, knowing the relevant languages as well as survival relevant to the climate and terrain ;)

Oh the nostalgic memories this brings up. I might actually still have the original character sheet of my very first GURPS character.

[evileeyore]

I ran it back in high school, it took two years of lunch hours... granted I also segued it into a fantasy version of the Russian-Afghan War where the PCs opted to join the tribes and help them resist the expansion of Halmaro and the Red Guild Mercenary Company into the tribal lands... so YMMV.

[jneedler]

Thank you all for the input. The answers range from 6-10 hours, which will be about 2 or 3 of our sessions (3 hours each). I am also going to have a zero session and work with all players to make sure they have characters they will enjoy playing, particularly because several have never played GURPS before.

Originally Posted by Ultraviolet

I think the main question is: How long do you want it to last?
I mean the scenario is basically a mini-campaign. Depending on how likely the players are to go off script and anf how the Gm handles improv.

Of course, the campaign can be either raced through in 3 hours (if you want to barebones everything), or dragged out into <edit> two years of lunch hours, according to evileeyore! </edit> ;p

I'm not so concerned with how long it will take, but I would like to give the players an reasonable assessment of how many nights we will be at this.

And now you have discovered my furtive ulterior motive in all of this: I'm hoping to hook the players into a permanent GURPS fantasy game. I've dabbled in several RPG locally (4 that I've played in more than one session during the last few months), and I just haven't found one that I feel is up to snuff. Therefor, I'm going to break into the GM business and give it a go myself.

As for how the GM handles improv, well .... this will be my first time GM'ing, so I guess we will see. However, I have been watching my way through Critical Role (I'm on episode 50 or so now, and absolutely LOVE it!), and that is the kind of GM'ing that I was hoping for. Of course, I won't be able to do the voices anywhere NEAR the level of Matt Mercer, but I also enjoy his descriptive, immersive style of story-telling. Though Matt has several years' worth of experience over me, that is what I hope to emulate ... at least well enough to lure the players into a more permanent campaign.

For example, I can envision making the "Hiring On" tests take an hour just in itself. Sure, I could have each player make a single skill check and say "you're hired," but wouldn't it be sooooooo much more fun to have the players make multiple checks and describe how exactly they are progressing through the trials:

NPC: <in a French accent, because snobby cooks are always French, right?> "Oh, you want to hire on as a cook, ehh? Well, here is the kitchen area <describe it briefly; it has everything needed to make a 'camp' meal> .... why don't you make dinner for the next shift of guards? 20 of them will be relieved from duty in one hour. Of course, when you muck it up, we can always see if the stray dogs will eat it ..."

GM: "What would you like to prepare?"

PC: <loooooooong pause> Ummmm, Shepard's Pie?

GM: "And how would you describe that dish to the cook who is evaluating you?"

PC: <starting to get into it now> "It's a hearty dish, consisting of meat and vegetables, covered by a layer bread. I can use almost any type of meats and vegetables, and long as they have large skillets, an oven, and plenty of spices."

GM: Excellent! They do indeed have all of the supplies you require. Let's make your first roll, to successfully gather and prepare your ingredients. Go ahead and roll, and what's your cooking skill?

PC: Uh, my cooking skill is a 15, and I rolled a ... <rolls> .... a 13!

GM: That's great! You find everything you need, get it all prepared, and layer it into several large skillets, which you stick into one of their ovens (which is already roaring hot). The head cook checks in on you several times, but seems satisfied so far with your preparations. You succeeded by 2, so you'll get a +2 bonus on your next skill check for this particular dish - remember that for later. Let's give that about 20 minutes to cook, and I'll check in on the fighters and see how their trials are coming along .....

Anyways, that's the idea I have. I'm sure I will make mistakes along the way, but we'll see if I can get the players to play along. I'm hoping that a) they'll play along, and b) they'll like the style so much that they want to do more after this short little mini campaign.

Wish me luck!

[Anthony]

A lot is going to depend on the group, because the first several parts are general roleplaying and can be elided or expanded drastically.

[Gnome]

The example was near and dear to my heart, as I played a cook when my group ran Caravan. It took about 5-6 sessions by the way, each lasting 6 hours or so. We find that combats in GURPS take a long time to play out in the level of detail we like (many optional rules turned on), and we ended up in a number of combats during the adventure. I wasn't the GM, so I don't know how much the GM pulled directly from the adventure and how much he expanded things. He did say that he altered the stats of the bandits a bit to make them more threatening, as some of the PCs were fairly well combat optimized, and he didn't want every fight to be a cakewalk.