Time to Run 'Sundown on Starmist'?

stanshinn's picture
stanshinn
May 14, 2014 - 5:12pm
I've got a gaming day with 10-12 hours to run some Star Frontiers game.

I've not run any of the Star Frontiers modules before. These will be adult players who will fairly focused on the game.

How long on average do you think it would take to run the 'Sundown on Starmist' module? I know it will vary greatly, but just want to know if this is something that you would expect to finish in 12 hours or less. I would presume it would take longer than 6 hours?

Thanks in advance!

-- Stan
Comments:

jedion357's picture
jedion357
May 14, 2014 - 6:16pm
at first I thought the thread title was Shadowrun on Starmist but...

I haven't run this module but I would say, do your homework and be prepared to transition fast if the players are losing interest.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

OnceFarOff's picture
OnceFarOff
May 15, 2014 - 7:49am
Depends on your gameplay style. I ran it with my kids and IIRC we ran it in like 6-9 hours over a couple of sessions. That said, I didn't really flesh out the heliope village encounters to the degree suggested in the book. To me that gets boring pretty fast. I had the sathar attck robots roll in pretty fast once they saw the temple ritual. 

Side note - I'm planning on using the Clikk tank as part of a larger story arc. In my setting the Clikk tank sent out a beacon to a base on starmist. Star Law sent a ranger team in there to investigate, but there was a big explosion and nobody ever heard from Ranger Team 4 again. The entire episode is classified.

jedion357's picture
jedion357
May 15, 2014 - 12:11pm
OnceFarOff wrote:
Side note - I'm planning on using the Clikk tank as part of a larger story arc. In my setting the Clikk tank sent out a beacon to a base on starmist. Star Law sent a ranger team in there to investigate, but there was a big explosion and nobody ever heard from Ranger Team 4 again. The entire episode is classified.


I like that.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

TerlObar's picture
TerlObar
May 15, 2014 - 4:42pm
Looking over the module, I'd say OnceFarOff's estimate is pretty good.  I'd say for focused adult players in a single session, it would take about 6-9 hours.  I think the variation would come with how much time was spent in the travel segments (more encounters with envrionment the longer it will take) and time spent in the village.  It would depend on how much "environment" you want to inject into the game over the bare minimum to get through the module.

From a play perspective, Sundown has always felt like one of the shorter modules of the set to me.
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OnceFarOff's picture
OnceFarOff
May 16, 2014 - 8:21pm
TerlObar wrote:
From a play perspective, Sundown has always felt like one of the shorter modules of the set to me.

I think this was the one that helped me dial in the amount of crunch my kids (and myself) like in our game. After running the Volturnus series with all of the resource management, and the warriors of White Light with all of the low key boarding actions - I really enjoyed the pace of this module. I think they were on to the main issue within 3-4 hours or so. I took it nice and slow on the tank b/c the kiddos were eating that up. Then the dungeon crawl at the sathar base. It really is a nice, concise module. 

stanshinn's picture
stanshinn
May 17, 2014 - 1:12pm
Thanks for all the feedback! 6-9 hours makes it the ideal module for the time slot I want to run (an all-day game; will run another pick-up game at the end if we run short).