DevDiary #02 - On the perception of speed

I am almost ready to release a first playable version of Total Party Kill, the gmLess grognardpunk game of procedural adventuring.

After an initial couple of tests the game felt slower than intended (1 session = 1 delve). Hence I started thinking about the "speed" of the game, comparing it to the speed of more traditional games in the OSR genre. Here are a few considerations...

---

1) The Sky-Blind Spire

Here the group completes a full adventure in about 2h. That said, the 24 or so rooms they explore are 99% empty and nondescript. The PCs face more or less 1 trap, 2 quick fights and 2 very brief "social" encounters.

- - -

2) Winter's Daughter

Again 2h = one full adventure. But the whole dungeon is exactly 12 "rooms". Again, most are empty, only presenting a minimal amount of scenic details, here and there a clue about the main "puzzle" of the adventure, a couple of traps, 1 fight, and one "social" interaction that would actually have continue into a whole new story, but was cut short to wrap things. A hook for future adventures.

---

3) On a Lonely Road

This was meant to be a one-shot. After 3h and 20m of play the group managed to go from the initial "you are in a tavern and are given a job" to what amounts to "shit has happened and NOW your adventure begins" :P
They basically had 2 "social encounters" very heavy on GM-exposition and 1-2 fights along the road towards the quest-location.

---

As time allows, I'll check more actual plays of OSR games to better understand their structure and pacing.

That said, here is what I got so far from TPK.

One test is ongoing by forum. Let me tell you, this game has too much interactivity to work well in a play-by-post format without people committed to more than one post/interaction a day 😅
Still, it's working and we are about to play our 6th turn. I'm not going to talk about this test today.

The other test happened in person and is the one I will consider in today's post.
It counted 3 Players (me included).
Accounting for non-play time spent on just being friends meeting and having a good time together...
And removing about 1h spent explaining the basics of the game, creating 3 PCs and generating the Quest...
And considering that things got slowed down further because amongst the three of us only one knew anything about the game (me), one was a complete RPG newbie and the rules were spread across a WIP file instead of being easily accessible in printed form...
We ended up with about 2 to 2.5 hours of real play. In this time we:
- explored 4 segments of the map across a total of 5 or 6 play turns (I should have kept more detailed notes 😅 )
- had 1 social interaction
- had 1 fight
- faced a complex situation involving a few neutral villagers, a few hostile cultists, a treasure and an apparent dead end we worked hard to find a way out of.

We thus ended the session before resolving the aforementioned complex situation.
It felt like we barely did anything, but in retrospect, and compared to the actual plays I have linked before, our game session was quite eventful.

For those interested, here is a brief summary of the story:

Our adventurers are Karma a clever saurian cenobite, Billy "the squid" an agile octopoid scoundrel, Esmer a glamorous halflinger brute.
Their quest is...

We find ourselves in a city of many streets where everything looks ghastly and abandoned and most of the inhabitants are people like us. Our quest requires us to move or relocate a person and then get out of this hostile place.
We are already at the hostile place where the quest can be achieved.
We have already engaged with some of its areas and denizens.
We have yet to achieve what the quest requires of us. Something has already gone badly sideways as relentless opposition forced us to retreat here, in an area that is small and temporarily safe, with *WAYS* in addition to the one we just came in.

The game thus begins with the Adventurers taking a short breather in a narrow alley. With them is Talbot, the person they need to whisk away from the abhorrent cult that holds the town in its grips. At their back, the way they came from. In front of them, a closed gate. In the background, the noises of a mob of cultists hunting for them in the night-time streets. It game me strong The Shadow over Innsmouth and The Shrouded Isle vibes.

While Billy checks the gate and Esmer controls that nothing is coming at them from the rear, Karma investigates Talbot, interrogating him about the cult, the town's layout and his overall condition (they need him alive, after all). This reveals a few interesting details but it's cut short by the revelation that Talbot's body is, slowly and painfully, mutating. There is not much time!

Billy opens the gate and they all go in, finding themselves is a sort of enclosed garden. They close and block the door behind them, but a shadowy figure with a live candle in their hand appears. A fight ensues, where the creature engulfs them in shadows and almost overpowers them, until they manage to knock off and extinguish the candle, vanquishing (for now) the creature.

The fight attracts the cultists, that start working to get the gate opened. The group flees from the garden into a couple of backstreets ending up in a round plaza. Crooked buildings are packed tight, with rubble and barricades closing all ways in and out. A central fountain holds on its top a shiny brazier. All around it a few villagers, dressed in ragged capes but too gaunt to look like real cult-zealots, seem intent into some sort of prayer. And hot on the group's heels, the mob of hostile cultists presses closer.

As Billy babysits Talbot while frantically trying to find a building they might be able to break into, Karma and Esmer face the mob of fanatics, initially holding them at bay with torches and blades. An effective but short-lived waiting strategy that soon ends with the first  few zealots breaking rank to charge the adventurers.

End of session.

---

I'm still pondering on the result of this game compared to the actual plays I have seen so far. Further tests will reveal more, as the Players get more confident with the system, I manage to print a couple of handy summary sheets, and a few tweaks are applied to the current rules. Overall, I feel we were less "slow" than what we perceived at the table. Time will tell :)