Hey guys, I hope all are good 🙂 I’ve just started into the world of dm’ing and my “one shot” is now on its 4th session, it seems almost impossible to wrap up the story we’ve been playing.
As a question, how long would a funnel world session take? I’m working Christmas day in a kitchen and the family are away. So I was thinking of running a dark (somehow themed) Holiday funnel world after I finish.
How long would a start to finish funnel world take? I guess it’s generally quicker to start as you don’t generate heroes but roll up villagers instead? Also any pointers anyone has about setting up a session, especially those relevant to dungeon world funnel world playbook are appreciated . Also would you recommend writing a dungeon starter to give myself a rough theme? or just go in like my last game with very little prep and see what emerges from questions?
I would start from the other end. How much time do you anticipate having to run this game? Once you know that, I think you can reverse engineer the pacing for a one shot.
good plan, I know I have at least five hours but want to be able to give the players a good estimate of time. I’m guessing that is ample time anyway with set up and a few encounters.
It wasn’t a Funnel World game, but I’ve run decent con games of Dungeon World, including character creation, in just four hours. About half my players were completely new to PbtA games, though not RPGs.
I don’t have any advice on funnel world, however I know how you feel about not knowing how to finish and my advice there is, let them finish what they think is most important. Whatever main grim portent they are wanting to stop is obviously what they want to see come to a conclusion the most. Have a talk after the end of the last session about how the world changed due to the other grim portents not being addressed. It works great, especially if you are wanting to continue in the same world. You end up making the setting for your next game just by wrapping up the current one!
Sinister Solstice by Ray Otus​ is a great Christmas themed DW adventure that works well as a one-shot and can be tuned to be quite dark or relatively festive.
Have run it a couple of times and had a blast. Happy to share the changes I made to make it darker.
My reading of Funnel World was to set up a Meat Grinder-type situation and then start loading the rolled-up characters into it one at a time. If anyone survives out the other end, they become first-level characters.
How long the adventure takes is largely dependent on how complicated the meat grinder is, although you can save time by having them in the middle of the grinder before they start. Have you looked at some of the book’s example scenarios?
Perhaps you could set up five or six encounters, and if it’s starting to get too late, cut to the end battle.