The Midnite Quicky, Part 2....

We had our first Midnite Quicky at Ubercon VII in Feb 2006. The games we ran were:

Friday - Dwarf Walks Into A Bar

Saturday - Tomb Raid!

Both sessions were scheduled from midnight until 2 a.m. These games were meant to get folks in and out of their first WEGS adventure in a jiff. Even the descriptions were brief:

"In Tomb Raid, a rag-tag assortment of Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, Gnobbits and Humnz stand at the entrance to a long-shunned Goblin Chieftain’s tomb wherein fabulous wealth awaits to be plundered. Sure, there’s a local rumour that things are heard slithering and thumping within, but that’s just a ruse to keep the children away... Scenario will take about an hour and a half to play – or shorter if your Ark decides to just “run off screaming”…

That was it - short and to the point. It was as simple an adventure as could be - go into a king's tomb, try to plunder as much booty as possible, set of some traps, awaken the tomb guard, die or run away... Well, it was anything but quick. The nature of sending players into a perilous tomb is the rub. Ever since TSR's infamous Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure Tomb Of Horrors, rpg players know to tread lightly in tombs... The fact that I designed the tomb with several obvious traps waiting to be triggered didn't help. Everywhere we have run this scenario (Ubercon, Origins, WittCon, GenCon) the results are the same - the game is slow and cautious. That is until the traps are sprung... Once folks set off one trap it generally leads to another and another. It's like a domino effect and it causes the last hour of play to be rapidly wild. It's a scenario that builds slowly, but then pays off in spades.

I love the fact that I promoted it as:

"Scenario will take about an hour and a half to play – or shorter if your Ark decides to just “run off screaming”… "

Doing a tomb an hour...

What was I thinking?!?

To be continued...