Treasure Tables is on hiatus as of December 13th, 2007 -- after two years of daily posts, I needed a break. If you're looking for GMing material, I have two recommendations: the hundreds of posts in TT's archives, and my new project, the multi-author GMing blog Gnome Stew. Happy GMing! -- Martin

Double Features

Sun. March 18, 2007 

Last night, my group’s Stargate SG-4 campaign had a double feature: Our GM, Don, ran two short adventures back to back.

We took a dinner break partway through the first one, and then a levelling-up break before starting the second scenario, and it worked really well across the board. We weren’t too tired to do two sessions in a row, they didn’t feel rushed and we had a great time.

Don was looking at the double feature as a way to make up for calling off a couple of previous sessions (which was very nice of him), but I don’t see any reason that this approach wouldn’t work as a change of pace for any group.

It was good stuff, and I’d love to do it again sometime. Have you ever tried a double feature?

More posts about: Scenarios

Comments

6 Responses to “Double Features”

  1. VV_GM on March 18th, 2007 7:35 pm

    No, I’ve never tried this myself but it sounds like a great way to get some quick one shots together and still have a serious night of gaming. I’m very tempted to give this a go.

  2. Walt Robillard on March 19th, 2007 4:48 am

    I love long adventures like this. Taking a couple of short adventures and linking them is good for attention grabbing details during a long span of game time.

    Glad that you had a good time.
    Regards,
    Walt

  3. Chad S. on March 19th, 2007 8:05 am

    My last gaming group was pretty spread out, with some driving as much as 3 hours one-way to play. With that in mind, we’d usually play one day a month, but for most of a day. We’d start around 1pm and run until midnight or so, with a break for supper in the middle. It worked out well and we got about as much done as a game that ran bi-weekly. The only problem was, it could be pretty tough to get schedules together to accommodate a whole day.

  4. Martin on March 19th, 2007 8:17 am

    The nice thing about this past Saturday was that we only started two hours early, so it really wasn’t all that much longer than a standard session. If we’d had to schedule two standard-length games, that could have been trickier.

  5. Crazy Jerome on March 19th, 2007 10:58 am

    Pretty much all of our groups’ games are double (or triple) features. Someone drives 4.5 hours to play on Saturday, they want some substantial play.

    In our case, the thing I like best about it is that it gives the group a chance to change direction radically, mid-way through the day. If the merchant house intrigue of the early session got wrapped up without any bad guy head bashing, the players can pick a later session objective that lets them vent a bit. :)

    The switch means that you can easily switch emphasis on different story arcs. You could do that anyway, even with an adventure, but it might seem a bit too implausible for many people.

  6. Dr Rotwang! on March 19th, 2007 12:29 pm

    Probably did when I was 16, 17. Long time and much, much energy ago.