Mahatatain
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How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Fri 16 Dec 2022, 14:37

Please can any GMs who've already run the Electric Dreams intro scenario give me some guidance on how long it takes to play? I'm just trying to work out if it's suitable for a one-shot where my group has 6 to 7 hours available.

Thanks for any advice.
 
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Tomas
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Sun 18 Dec 2022, 12:05

Hello! I'll let others chime in, but in playtesting we typically did it in three sessions of 2-3 hours each. So a single session of 6-7 hours should be enough if you make sure to push things along. :)
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Gebohq
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Mon 19 Dec 2022, 03:55

Those playtesters must have been booking it!

I started my first session of Electric Dreams recently, and my primary experience has been running Alien:RPG, where the estimated time for published scenarios seem to mostly track with my experience (more on the longer end than the shorter). While the first session was roughly 3 hours 0.5 to1 hour being approx. character selection, rules and setting overview, and such), my group has only gone through the "setup" and first shift so far. Granted, part of that is that I had 4 players, and each went to a different section. While I also wasn't "rushing" things, I don't think I was particularly sluggish either. Still, even if the pace picks up to double that time, I suspect 3 will be the minimum number of sessions for my group, possibly 4-5. If the pace stays the same, it could go up to 6-8. We'll see though!
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KoDaMoJo
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Tue 20 Dec 2022, 22:46

I've run one game with a solo player over three sessions for 7 hours of gameplay. It did deviate from the outline in the case file.
Assuming players unfamiliar with yze, I would budget 60 minutes per player to get the major clues plus downtown events.
2 Chases took an average of 2.5 rounds and about 20 minutes each. The mid-game unarmed combat with 2 actors took 3 rounds for about 20 minutes, but the "final" climactic firefight took 7. I'd estimate that final setpiece took us 10 minutes per round with 3 actors. With 4 players and 4-5 atagonists, I'd budget 15 minutes per round.
7 hours should be right if you keep the action snappy.
After a good RPG session, you'll be congratulated on that critical success for a time; after a great RPG session, you'll be telling stories of that critical failure for years.
 
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BytomMan
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Thu 22 Dec 2022, 06:31

We did two sessions of four hours each.
 
Tarynt Essrog
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Tue 17 Jan 2023, 01:46

I'm doing something unusual with the game, but you could steal some elements of what I'm doing to speed your game up if you want.
I'm running the case as a featurette. I run one shift of Electric Dreams at the beginning of game night before switching to our ongoing campaign of classic Star Frontiers. Instead of making my two players play Novak and Fenna, I let them make their own characters, and told them the four pre-generated characters are NPC detectives assigned to the RDU that they can send to do legwork. (I also said they only have access to three spinners, so they have some limitations). When the NPC's visit a scene, I make an observation, insight, or manipulation roll as appropriate. If there are two, the roll is assisted. For each success, the NPC's find one clue or learn one piece of information that I report to the players in character. If the NPC's fail, they can push, but a one means they have made a mess of it. Either contaminated evidence so even the players won't find it if they revisit the scene themselves, or alienated a witness. They won't push if the players tell them to err on the side of being careful, or if Novak is present. (I went ahead and did the prelude scene where they pull Novak away from leave. The Chemistry that unfolded through roleplaying established that Novak is kind of a pain in their ass. He'll roll his eyes when they miss something, but just say, "It's your case, man. I'm not gonna' tell you how to waste your manpower." And then say, "That's what I've been sayin' over here, " when they realize what they were missing).

We are three shifts in. I've spent about an hour on each shift, but this is always the first hour of game night, so everyone is settling in, opening snacks and making small talk as well. Plus, the game ends at the end of the shift, so I think that makes the players linger a little longer in the scene than they would if they could proceeded straight to the next one. I stressed to the players that in game time is a factor and they may want to split up, with the option of NPC backup; but so far they have been sticking together and sending the NPC's out as teams.

Morning Shift:
he players decided they wanted to stick together and went to the Snake Pit. They got all the clues, but were successfully misdirected by Styles into thinking that Jelle Schyler and the human supremacists were their prime suspects. One player openly speculated about Styles being a replicant and asked how he would determine that, but backed off when I told him that it might cost him promotion points if he starts forcibly screening every witness he talks to. They asked for Styles's address, so he said he was couch surfing and gave them the phone number of his friend, "Bob".

They sent Novak and Fenna to Leah's apartment. (Almost bringing them to the Snake Pit as back up before they noticed Leah's Address on her profile card is what prompted the eye rolling cited above). All they noticed was the picture, which Novak mentioned looked like Leah as a little girl, when he reported in later.

Bakker went to the morgue and relayed what Coco says.

Percival went to ESPER and Main Frame and rolled 2 successes, so he found the Metrokab image and Leah's report, which were the only clues there that didn't require other leads to unlock.

Afternoon Shift:
The players meet Novak and Fenna enroute to take possession of the picture (which he wouldn't have removed if they didn't specifically tell him to) on their way back to LAPD HQ. they are second guessing their decision to not pay more attention to Styles outside the Snake Pit, (he took off once he planted his narrative about human supremacists and the detectives went inside), so they give "Bob's" phone number to Bakker and tell her to track him down with Percival. They send Novak and Fenna to Kill Magazine to talk to Jelle Shyler.

They want to get the bullet analyzed. I told them it will take an unknown number of shifts, but they can make sure it gets done faster if they send someone to make sure it gets done. They decide to do that themselves. They also want to analyze Leah's photo. They also want to use the ESPER to confirm if Style's really was at the Snake Pit. They learned that the bullet is a .44 caseless. One player notices some barely visible numbers and symbols in the margin of Leah's photo. I did not see those before he mentioned them, but I decide that that allows Coco to identify the picture as a stelline scan. The other player rolls at least three successes looking for Styles in the ESPER, (maybe four, I can't remember), so I confirm that styles was at the Snake Pit, and let him find Styles's profile from the image in the ESPER. Said player kick's himself for not trusting his instincts earlier. (He also asks if that is enough to arrest Styles, so I clarify that that means he has a professional responsibility to execute Styles the next time they encounter each other). This player also notices the "Doc Badger" stamp on the back of the photo prop without any prompting.

I had Bakker report that "Bob" was unhelpful, so Percival tried to track the phone. It's a prepaid phone registered to a Gustavo Morales. The address attached is a pizzeria in Piss Alley (not to far from Animoid Row on the map). If they follow up, Gustavo if a delivery guy that sells prepaid phones for cash on the side. He might recognize Styles if they show him the mugshot, but it will be a dead end.

I didn't read the Kill Section closely enough and thought Jelle provides information freely. On the second reading I see that you were supposed to make a Manipulation check or else you would need to trade case details with him. If I had caught that, I might have ruled that Novak is to experienced to let any details slip, at the expense of being too jaded to try to manipulate any of Jelle. Since I already had Novak report everything Jelle knows, I guess Nova is jaded and careless instead of jaded and careful. I'm going to make an opposed manipulation check between him and Novak to determine if any case details appear in KILL Magazine. The players will lose a promotion point for each success Jelle beats Novak by, (if any), because they should have known better than to send Novak to talk to a yellow tabloid journalist. If I had to do at over, (and it was an NPC other than Novak), I would make opposed manipulation checks. On a tie, Jelle keeps quiet. If the NPC detective wins, Jelle tells what he knows. If Jelle wins, he still tells what he knows, but manages to extract 1 lost promotion point worth of information out of the detective for each success.

Evening Shift:
The players get a call from Quell while at HQ. They had been putting that off because they specifically didn't want to deal with Wallace Corp until they had more information, but realize they can't put it off longer. One of them even tells the other that they shouldn't tell Wallace Corp anything about their suspicion that Leah shot Sandor for fear that Wallace Corp might try to kill them to cover it up. But, the other one kind of screws that up that plan when he includes in his summery of the case that other detectives are checking out Bullet Bob's right now. Quell follows up on that and he explains that the bullet that killed Sandor is an unusual .44 caliber that is hard to source, and even clarifies that is exclusive to the older generation of Blade Runner sidearms. They don't seem to realize what a big slip that was.

The players sent Bakker/Percival to Doc Badger's and Novak/Fenna to Bullet Bob's, both teams with instructions to show the shop keeper Leah's mugshot and ask about her. They learned that Leah got her picture about three weeks ago, and referred to the girl as her daughter; which had them momentarily questioning if she was a replicant. (When asked, I ruled that Stelline Scans can't be taken from hu8mans, so that put that question to bed). They Also learned that Leah visited Bullet Bob's early that morning and bought 2 boxes of caseless.44.

[So Quell realizes that Leah Killed Sandor. I was going to send the kill team out in the next shift, but then I realized it may not be obvious to Quell that the detectives suspect Leah. Why would they be be trying to find who has purchased .44 caseless from Bullet Bob if they suspected Leah? She would have been able to get it issued to her by the RDU before the shooting. (I'm not really clear why the sent a team to Bullet Bob's instead of Metrokab, which is a loose lead still dangling from the first shift. They may not have totally been thinking it through either. Bullet Bob's was a pertinent lead when they first ID'd the bullet, but should have seemed like a red herring once Jelle fingered Leah. It's only a coincidence that Leah went to buy extra ammo after the shooting when she realized she had to run). I almost decided to send the hits quad to abduct one of the Blade Runners that went to Bullet Bob's and find out what they learned, but that doesn't really follow either. Quell wouldn't expect them to have learned anything useful from Bob if she doesn't anticipate Leah buying extra ammo, and there is no reason that she would. She would assume that Bullet Bob is a red herring that is thankfully distracting the RDU and giving her an extra shift to address the Leah situation].

So back to your original question, I think this took all together 3 hours. I think it would have been less than 2 if we sat down and played it straight through, but I was also super prepared because I was only prepping for one shift at a time. Making some NPC's available to do some legwork to the less interesting scenes moves the case along faster. I'd say Metrokab, Doc Badger's, and Bullet Bob's are all scenes where you aren't losing any fun if you let them happen off scene. Same thing for letting an NPC do research at LAPD. If anything, I think the decisions about where to allocate their manpower and the uncertainty about how good a job the NPC's are doing adds a lot more to the game than actually acting out any of those scenes would. The KILL Magazine scene might have been more interesting if we had played it out ourselves, but the strength of the reaction they had to Novak's account was good enough that I'm not sure the actual scene wouldn't have been anti-climactic in comparison. I would have been more fun if one of them went to Leah's apartment, but they might still go back if they get stuck. Novak and Fenna missed butterflies and the poem.

One tweak I'm going to make on the second day is to divide downtime into sleep and personal time. Characters need to sleep every 4th shift to avoid penalties, but need to take another shift of personal time to gain the other benefits. And the NPC's are going to insist on 2 shifts off every day unless they can be manipulated.
 
DrDM987
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Wed 31 May 2023, 17:00

We completed Electric Dreams in 5 sessions of roughly 2 hours each. Myself (as GM) and the three players have played plenty of 5e but were all new to the Year Zero Engine and new to investigation games in general. We had the final showdown at the memory lab and there was some great roleplay and moral decision making going on throughout. Very little combat overall, which is fine as a palate cleanser from 5e. We didn't get to try out the chase rules, which was a shame - several potential opportunities, but the PCs didn't 'bite' and I didn't want to push them. Overall, it was a great experience and we're looking forward to the next case file coming out. Back to 5e now for a bit (the players love it) and then maybe some Alien, CoC, or a PbtA game as another palate cleanser.
Seasoned D&D 5e DM wanting to explore more RPG systems and genres
 
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neperevarine
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Wed 14 Jun 2023, 13:32

It took 2 sessions for our party - first one was 4 hours, second was around 2 hours + half an hour of post-game discussions and optional stuff.
 
Colgrevance
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Re: How long does Electric Dreams take to play?

Thu 15 Jun 2023, 11:49

To add another data point: It took us three sessions of approcimately three hours each. Additionally, we had a session 0 (ca. 1,5 hours), in which the players chose their characters and I explained the rules system and gave an introduction to Foundry. As none of my players had used this vtt before, getting used to it might have cost us some time; on the other hand, having only two pcs probably meant we got through the case file faster than larger groups.

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