With our 4th gaming session completed (Carrion Crown YouTube Playlist), the group is making rapid progress thru the storyline – at least rapid compared to prior campaigns. Crunching the numbers, our previous campaigns averaged about 12 sessions of 5 hours per Chapter, for the 6 chapter storyline. For Rise of the Runelords, that comes out to roughly 360 hours of game time, or about 3 years of calendar time. For our Age of Ashes campaign, we tended to keep to the same basic pace.
For the Carrion Crown, with a number of more recent game policies and changes, we have managed to cut this down (thus far) significantly. Chapter 1 I am expecting to wrap up likely in session 6, instead of 12 – roughly a 50% improvement. The real challenge those is making sure we dont slow down later in the campaign – early levels tend to be fairly quick and as characters get more abilities, the mechanics slow down. If we can do so, that would reduce the campaign to only 18 months – which works well given that we have no longer than 2 years for the total duration before at least a couple of the players conceivably graduate high-school and move on to other distractions. 24 months is probably more likely for the full duration, and is my target number that I am working with.
For the actual story, the group is now fully involved in the exploration of the Harrowstone prison. After exploring the upper floors, then entered thru a burned out access tunnel, by descending thru the ruins by rope. The initial overly curious monk was ambushed and overwhelmed by undead, but not before drawing the rest of the group down into the dungeon as well. Unfortunately, someone or something from above released or cut the rope, at least temporarily trapping the group in the lower levels – a level known to be haunted by the dead prisoners and guards from long before. The group, having spent most of the day already exploring, is now running lower on health and resources, and outside, the sun is rapidly setting…
