Small Scenarios

Image by Daniel Dociu

I mostly play with busy adults, and we run short sessions – 2 hours at a time. This works great for the most part, but it makes large complex scenarios and adventures difficult to complete coherently (who’s gonna remember all that detail after weeks when only playing 2 hours a week?).

So here’s where my thoughts currently are:

• The City itself is an adventure site with dangers and problems. While there’s moments of respite, it’s still not easy to accomplish things just because you’re among the civilized.
• The City is populated by points-of-light locations that offer rewards if obstacles are overcome. Each one of these sites offers a handful of obstacles, possibly following the Three Fight Model – a set of cool fights or obstacles with some loose interlinking.
• These adventure sites may also be loosely interlinked with each other for larger quests, without a need to juggle too much info between sessions – each site should be able to be tackled in one session.

The overarching idea is that the City itself is the “dungeon”, and each location with it’s obstacles and rewards functions as a room in that dungeon.

Some existing published adventures that would work well for this method are below [to my players: do not read these]. Note that drivethrurpg links are affiliate links.

• A Night at the Golden Duck
• The Stygian Library
• The Gardens of Ynn
• The Planarch Vault
• Dungeon from a Distant Star
• Escape from the Astral Spellhold
• Mount Zorgoth
• Noises in the Old Theater
• Almost any “Five Room” or “One Page” dungeon

And there’s many many more. These are just a few that could easily slot into urban environs, perhaps with a bit of color changing (maybe Mount Zorgoth is Zorgoth Tower, the largest spire in the City).

Of course, there are many much larger published adventures that can be cut and divided into smaller scenarios for use like this.

Any good ones I missed?