I have a regular gaming group of 6 players and we've been playing a successful traditional fantasy campaign for about six months now (roughly 12 sessions). This summer, around mid-June, the group dynamic is going to change as we'll be loosing a player until around September. I'm trying to take this opportunity to "shift gears" and I want to run a DS campaign while our numbers are slightly reduced so the player who is absent won't miss anything in the "regular" campaign. The group seems fine with this idea, so I’ve started the first stages of planning this brief lay-over to Athas.
In short, I'm looking for a short-lived campaign concept, something where the players would complete a valid goal on Athas after about 6 game sessions (roughly 6-7 hours of in-character play each). I know there are a lot of things I could do and I've come up with a few of my own ideas (which I'd happily elaborate on if anyone is interested) but I'd like to know if anyone on this board has run a campaign under similar constraints and what they’ve done to make it work.
Just to give everyone an idea of the group dynamic: I will have five players in their 20's and 30's, the group is very diverse--as "dramatic" as they are combat-driven--they would like to have a largely neutral-aligned party, and I intend to start them at 3rd level (or the equivalent in the case of Thri-kreen, Half-Giants, etc.).
If anyone has any thoughts on what I could do to give this group the best Dark Sun experience possible in a short amount of time I would be very grateful.
Cheers,
Maglaurus
As for short term campaigns. You just need to make sure you are progressing right. Set yourself a chart so to speak (not that players ever follow your plans to a T)... Give yourself a stopping point (or rather a Nightly marker) so that you know you are on schedule when you reach the marker. If you are early, good, you can always add filler, side plots, or the like.
My Wife ran us through an old 1st edition game that started with the intent to be short term because she wasn't sure if all the players would like it and want to stick around with it. Of course, this wasn't homebrewed, it was the Lost City Module. Since we all enjoyed the game, she then ran us through the Desert of Desolation series. I think our character reached 7-9th level abouts throughout the course of the campaign. Then work schedules changed, the baby started becomming more of a game disturbance making it hard for her to run it, and players joined or dropped out. So the game finally reached an end.
The party can "win" only one way: if they cut their losses and run in time. They have no chance against a big merchant house. If they recognise this, and remove their assets from the business they can make some comfortable living from the money they acquired some other places, and this can be a kind of "happy ending" if you would like such thing included. But "happy endings" are absolutely not mandatory in DS.
Such things (big trade houses crush small ones) happens very often on Athas, so the situation is very normal in DS. And now the players can play the role of the loosers (altough they are not aware that until the end) instead of the ones who win against increadible odds.
But be careful, how this ending can influence your player's opinion about the world. If they would hate DS for that than you can use the alternative "happy ending" solution I presented -and probably never play DS with that group again. In this case its simply not for them.