Two weeks ago, I had to run a bunch of RPG sessions in some very strict time slots. I also had to lean heavily on a dozen other GMs to do the same. Why? Because I was hosting the very first ever Angry Games NonConvention. Which I’m pretty sure I’ve bragged enough about.

The thing is, as my fresh-faced, eager GMing volunteers gathered for the pre-NonCon huddle to pester me for advice, I realized lots of them had never tried to run any sort of official RPG session for a convention or game day or game club or anything like that. And I realized I should take the time to give them some pointers. Because running RPG sessions in very specific, very tight time slots is tricky as f$&%.

I also realized I should have done that s$&% a month before I asked a dozen people to run RPG sessions in very specific, very tight time slots at my NonConvention. So, look, I’ll get this barn shut while you gather up the horses, and, hopefully, I’ll see you at Angry Games NonCon 2023.

Yes, I know what that name sounds like.

Gaming on the Clock: When the Game Must End on Time

Occasionally, GMs find themselves having to cram an entire RPG scenario or adventure into one — und genau eins — play session. Not only that. But they also find themselves with a very strict time limit on the play scenario. Convention games are, of course, the Ur example of this kind of s$&%. When you run a game at a convention, you’re assigned a table and a time slot. At the appointed start time, some randos are going to sit down and play the game for however many hours you’ve got, and then you’ll neither see nor hear from them ever again. If you’re lucky. Meanwhile, you’re going to have some other GM breathing down your neck while you clear the table so he can start his own game for his own randos. And just like you, that GM needs every f$&%ing minute of his time slot to give his randos a complete gaming experience. Because the randos are expecting a complete gaming experience. And it’s your job to deliver.

Now, this ain’t just about convention games. Lots of folks these days — especially old-timers like me — run game clubs at schools, libraries, churches, and places like that. I know. I’ve heard from them. And they, too, have tight time slots. Because bus schedules and parental car pools and limited room assignments and s$&% like that. And just like convention games, gaming clubs tend to do the drop-in-and-drop-out thing. Whoever shows up is who plays and there’s no guarantee it’s the same people every week.

There are also GMs like me who’ve committed to running campaigns that need structures similar to convention games and game clubs and s$&% like that. GMs who, like me, probably didn’t realize it and then f$%&ed up their campaigns for four straight sessions over nine weeks before they recognized the error of their dumb-a$& ways.

The point is, whether you run convention games, game store events, a game club, or just a West March style drop-in, drop-out adventure of the week style game or you’ve got a limited number of sessions to provide a complete mini-campaign experience, you’ve got to know how to cram a complete scenario or adventure into however many hours you’ve got and not what minute more.

So, here are Angry’s Time-Slot Gaming Bestest Practices.

Making an A$& of Your Players: Expectations and Assumptions

If you’re going to do this Time-Slot Gaming s$&%, you’ve got to go in with the right expectations. The right assumptions. And so do the players. The problem is the players maybe won’t. So you’ve got to go in knowing what the players should be expecting so you know it’s not your fault when their expectations aren’t meant.

What’s that mean?

It’s like this: when players sit to play convention games — or whatever — they should know what they’re getting into. And if they don’t, it’s their own dumb-a$& fault, not yours. It ain’t your problem. And you don’t have time to make Expectation Management your problem. If a player complains that the game you ran isn’t what they wanted, you’re allowed to say:

I’ve got precisely four hours to provide a complete gaming experience to a bunch of random a$&hats with varying levels of experience and preparation. That puts a lot of limits on what I can do. So, either suck it buttercup, or go find another game because I literally don’t have time to explain this s$&%.

Feel free to say that more politely — or to adjust my advice if you’re running a game club for kids — but take that s$&% to heart. Managing Player Expectations isn’t your job; don’t try. If the players have the wrong expectations, that’s on them. And whoever organized the event at which you’re running your game.

While we’re on hard truths, also remember that running the game you promised to run for all the players is way more important than making any one player happy. This means it’s okay to tell a player to shut up if they hold up the game. Politely if you must. But, again…

I don’t have time to keep telling you to stop talking over me because I’ve got four hours to run this adventure for the five people sharing the table with you so either shut up or walk away.

When you’re running a Time-Slot Game, you’re on the Clock. The Clock is king. Not your players. Not even you. The Clock’s needs trump everyone’s because the Clock ensures the players with the right expectations get the game they signed up for and have a good time. And so does every other player and GM waiting to use the table when you’re done.

What to Expect When Your Conventioning: Player Expectations

So, what do players expect from a convention or game club? Or, rather, what should they expect?

First, they should expect a low-complexity game with limited options. And the reasons should be so f$&%ing obvious to all y’all that I ain’t explaining that s$&% any further.

Second, they should expect a focused, undistracted game. One that ain’t allowed to stall out. Sure, it’s cool to joke around and be social — that’s why we play cooperative games — but players won’t be allowed to hold up the game for too long with war stories from games long past. Nor will they be allowed to flip through the rulebook for ten minutes before deciding what spell to prepare or what action to take. Hell, players should expect to keep their rulebooks in their backpacks. They should expect the GM to handle any and all rules calls and questions. Keeping the game flowing is more important than following the rules and close enough is good enough.

Still on the subject of focused, undistracted games, players should be ready to act at any time. They should be attentive. They should not be distracted by anything that isn’t the game. This means they should expect to keep their f$&%ing Twitter machines in their pockets because every second it takes to get a player’s attention hurts the game. Every. Single. Second.

Third, players should expect a somewhat guided — maybe even linear — gameplay experience. I ain’t going to say railroad — because decision points are a key part of RPG adventures — but players should expect to stay on task. They won’t be allowed to go too far off the rails or waste an hour shopping or running a noodle shop. Not unless literally every player at the table is enthusiastically and fully on board with a noodle shop game instead of whatever was advertised.

Fourth, players should expect a team sport. If they f$&% with other players or sabotage the team, they should expect to be told off.

Finally, players should expect to play whatever the f$&% character they’re handed without complaint and without asking for substitutions or revisions.

Do players sit down without these expectations? Yes. All the f$&%ing time. I’ve run a lot of convention games over the years. And I’ve told a lot of players that a convention game is different. I’ve even ejected players from my table for arguing over this s$&% to the point where it delayed the game. Well, I did that once. The thing is, every convention’s got policies about dealing with problem players. Make sure you know them. So I don’t recommend kicking players out. But I do recommend giving a problem player the option to either shut up and play the game you’re running or to walk away.

You can’t fire someone if they quit.

What to Expect When Your Conventioning: Your Expectations

Those expectations above? That’s the s$&% you should totally expect your players to expect. And if they don’t, they’re wrong and it ain’t your job to fix it. But you’ve also got to temper your own expectations. There are some things you just can’t — or shouldn’t — expect from your players. Because however fair they may be, they ain’t gonna happen.

First, whatever you write in the event description, and no matter how the club or convention is advertised, assume one or more of the randos at your table won’t have any idea how to play the game. At all. Expect to teach whatever game you’re running. Or, at least, to help less-experienced players get through your game.

Second, whatever you personally think about your responsibility to the hobby or the point of a convention game or game club, the fact is that your first job is to turn less experienced — or inexperienced — players into enthusiastic RPG fans. When you agree to run any sort of official game in any capacity anywhere, you’re accepting a position as Mentor and Ambassador. If you ain’t ready to do that — if you don’t think that’s your job — don’t run organized games at conventions. It ain’t a job for you.

This ain’t about growing the hobby. It ain’t about duty to the community. It’s really about how accepting the role of Mentor and Ambassador changes how you run your games. On an unconscious or subconscious level. If you think of yourself as a Mentor and Ambassador, you’ll run the best damned official game you can and you’ll be attentive to the randos at your table and you won’t take any s$&% from anyone who’s ruining the experience for the least experienced, newbiest among your players.

If you’re a Mentor and Ambassador, you’re alert, attentive, and empathic and you’re totally justified in stopping a$&holes with the wrong expectations from f$&%ing up your table.

Third, do not expect players to show up with anything. Don’t expect them to have dice, pencils, paper, characters, rulebooks, spell cards, miniatures, or anything else. Assume the only thing you can count on any player bringing to your table is the minimum amount of clothing required by law and common decency. And if there’s a big cosplay scene at your convention, you can’t even count on that.

The point is, bring enough cheap-a$& pads of paper and pencils and dice you don’t care about losing to supply your table. And bring any pregens and rulebooks and game materials you’re gonna need.

Fourth, expect any player who brings their own character is going to cause a problem. That may not be true, but it’s true often enough that it ain’t worth taking the chance. Bring enough pregens for everyone and make every player — every player — use one. End of story.

Void Where Prohibited by Law: League and Society Games

Angry’s Time-Slot Gaming Bestest Practices are great for any random convention game or club game or official game. But if you’re running games as part of some organized play group — like WotC’s Adventurers’ League or Paizo’s Pathfinder Avengers, you might have to abide by different rules. Those organizations require strict adherence to the rules and they let people bring their own character from official table to official table. They also, supposedly, segregate beginners from more experienced players and help manage player expectations. Supposedly.

The point is: if the specific event you’re running a game for specifically contradicts one of my Bestest Practices, follow those rules, not mine. But — as someone who has run official games for publishers like those mentioned above — let me assure you my Bestest Practices are correct and publishers really should ask me how they should run that s$&%. And at least one of them has. But I can’t talk about that. NDAs are a b$%$.

Just Add Water: How To Make a Time-Slot Adventure

If you’re in control of what you’re running, the best way to ensure a good Time-Slot Game is to purpose-build an adventure or scenario yourself.

If you’re not in control of what you’re running — or you don’t want to put in the hard work — the next best way to ensure a good Time-Slot Game is to seek out a quick-start adventure — which may RPGs included these days in their GM guides or as a downloadable supplement — or to hunt down a Free RPG Day scenario.

But let’s say you want to build your own? How do you do that?

This Ain’t About Five Room Dungeons: Five Scenes or Five Encounters

First, the magic number is five. If you’re building an event-based, timeline-based, or open-ended adventure, design five scenes. If you’re building a site-based adventure — a dungeon crawl — design five encounters.

Now, I ain’t telling you to specifically use the Five-Room Dungeon structure invented by John Fourr in 2006 and which has only grown in popularity over the years. It’s a good structure. There ain’t anything wrong with it. Especially the way it’s evolved. But the s$&% I’m talking about today is a different beast.

Let’s start with a site-based adventure. A dungeon adventure needs a beginning scene, an ending scene, and a dungeon. And that dungeon needs five significant encounters, including an introductory encounter and a climax encounter.

The dungeon itself can have more than five rooms. In fact, it should have more than five rooms. It should have between five and ten rooms. But only five should contain encounters. Of the remainder, two or three should contain interesting s$&% to stumble on — hints about the dungeon’s lore or function or side paths with minor, useful treasures. And the last couple should be empty.

That’s easy, right? If I’m doing a Time-Slot Game about heroes delving into the goblin caves to recover a lost book of poems the goblins stole thinking it was a spell book, first there’s a scene where I explain the goblins stole the poetry book and last is a scene where the party returns the spellbook and gets congratulated and paid. In the dungeon, there’s an initial encounter with goblin sentries and a climax where the goblin shaman spouts worthless poetry while the shaman’s pet ogre provides the real fight. In the middle, maybe there’s a rushing stream to cross because the goblins broke the bridge, another goblin encounter, and a treasure room with some traps.

If you’re building an event-based adventure — or any other non-dungeon adventure — you’ve got five scenes to work with. And each scene — except the first and last — can compromise one or two encounters or events. Of course, the first scene’s the opening scene wherein you set s$&% up and establish what the heroes are doing and why. And the last scene’s the closing scene wherein you describe the adventure’s resolution and how it affects the world. The penultimate scene contains the adventure’s climax as one of its encounters or events. And the second scene contains the incitement as one of its encounters or events to get the ball rolling.

A scene, by the way, comprises one or more encounters or events that serve a specific subgoal and take place at a describable location. Let me show you how this all shakes out by way of an example.

At the Angry Games NonCon, I ran an adventure about a group of heroes trying to get one of two magical MacGuffins away from an evil wizard’s agents so the evil wizard couldn’t do evil things at evil midnight.

Seriously, the Angryverse has normal midnights and evil midnights. This was an evil midnight.

Scene 1: Introduction

I started by telling the players that their last adventure had left the PCs in the town of Hearth for a few days’ rest. I set the tone. Basic Transylvania setup. Mysterious ruler, no one goes at night, strange noises in the streets, that sort of s$&%.

Scene 2: At The Inn

The heroes are chilling at the inn just before curfew when two mysterious strangers show up with a possibly kidnapped child and hide in a private parlor to have a secret conversation. The heroes can spy on the strangers, confront them, or do whatever else they want. If they don’t get involved, the kid sneaks away and thrusts a mysterious thing into one of the PC’s hands and says it has to get back to this particular tomb before midnight or bad s$&%’s going down. If they do get involved, they learn the kid was rescued from an evil wizard and needs to get to the temple to claim sanctuary before midnight or bad s$&%’s going down.

Then the Baroness’ men attack the inn and that forces everyone to get moving. Either the heroes team up with the strangers or cover their escape or they fight the guards or they make their own escape.

Scene 3: Through the Streets

After escaping the inn, the party’s got to get to bring the thing to the place. Could be they’re bringing the kid to the temple, could be they’re bringing the thing to the tomb. Maybe they teamed up with the NPCs, or maybe they didn’t. Either way, they’re trying to get somewhere after curfew. And they can either fight their way through the guards on the streets or sneak via the back alleys. Either way, the scene’s over when they get to where they’re going.

Scene 4: At the Place

Now the party’s at the place and they need to secure the thing. Either they’re claiming sanctuary for the kid at the temple and have to talk their way past the gargoyles that come to life at night and protect the temple, or they’re returning a shroud to a martyr’s tomb and have to convince a malevolent wight that they’re not the thieves who stole it in the first place. If they fail either social challenge, a fight’s going to happen.

Then, just when it seems like all is done, a boss shows up. The wizard’s werewolf lieutenant attacks to reclaim either the kid or the shroud and provides an awesome, two-stage boss fight. Kind of. I’m simplifying here.

Scene 5: The End

With the thing secured and the boss beaten, the party is driven by the boss’ dying words to seek out the priest at the temple — if they’re not there already — and they reunite with the strangers and learn The Whole Story™. They’re thanked for their efforts and leave the table secure in the knowledge that the town has been saved from evil magic. For now.

The end.

Everything’s Optional: Modular Encounters and Challenges

Limiting yourself to five encounters or scenes is a great way to make an adventure fully playable in one Time Slot. But it ain’t a guarantee. And, when it comes to Time-Slot Gaming, you need guarantees. This means you’ve got to be able to adjust your adventure content on the fly.

Which means being able to cut content.

There are actually only three things that every adventure must have. There are only three non-optional adventure bits. First, there’s the climax. An adventure must have a conflict that resolves the adventure. Second, there’s the beginning. An adventure must have a goal and the players must know what it is. Third, there’s a resolution. The players have to know how dealing with the climax fulfilled — or permanently cost them — their goal.

Everything else? F$&%ing optional.

If you gave me one hour to run the adventure I described above, I’d have spent a few minutes setting the scene and describing the party’s escape from the inn. I’d have asked them where they were heading and how. And then, I’d have transitioned to the awesome two-stage boss fight for a half hour. And after fifteen minutes of fighting, whatever was happening, stage two would have happened. With fifteen minutes left to go, I’d have passed summary judgment, declaring the party winners or losers, and describing the resolution before packing up my s$&% to leave.

The point? Don’t build an adventure that requires anything more than a beginning, an ending, and a climax. Do not hide three levers in a dungeon the party has to pull. Don’t make the boss vulnerable only to a thing that must be taken from another, different boss first. Assume anything that ain’t the beginning, the ending, or the climax might get skipped and plan accordingly.

Tree Branches, Not Garden Paths: Simple Branching Paths

RPGs are about choice. But Time-Slot Games don’t have a lot of room for free choice and open-ended play. With just three hours to set up, break down, and play a game half the players don’t know how to play, you don’t have time for open-ended, off-the-rails bulls$&%. But choice. You still need it. And that means branching paths are the way to go.

There are two good ways to build Branching Path adventures. First, you can offer an early choice that defines which challenges the party will face or which goal they’ll pursue. That’s kind of like building two different adventures and letting the players choose which one to play from the inside. And that’s kind of what I did for my game. If the party interacted with the strangers, they’d learn the kid’s blood was important and help get him to the church. If the party didn’t, they’d end up with a burial shroud and instructions to bring it to a tomb. The players got to decide how to interact with the world and that shaped how the adventure played out but without the risk of the adventure going all open-ended and not reaching an ending in time.

Second, you can build two paths that lead to the same place. And I sorta did that too. In Scene 3, the party got to choose either a stealth challenge or a combat challenge. Either way, they’d still end up at their destination. Which was either the temple or the cemetery. And either way, they faced the same boss in the end and got the same resolution.

Effectively, by combining a Pick Your Goal and a Looped Branch, I had four adventures: two destinations and two paths, but I didn’t have to write more than one-and-one-half adventures to run it.

Adventure Time: Running a Time-Slot Game

Writing a good Time-Slot Game Adventure sets you up for success, but you’ve still got to run the race. And you’ve still got to cross the finish line before the clock hits zero. So, here’s some s$&% to keep in mind on game day.

Four Hours Means Four Hours: Setup and Breakdown

First, remember that whatever time slot you’ve got, that’s literally all the time you get at the table. You likely won’t have extra time to set up or clean up. Sometimes you will, but you can’t count on that. And you must clean up the space. Someone will probably need it when you’re done.

So, don’t plan to use any elaborate gaming crap. Skip the dungeon terrain and don’t bring your entire miniature collection. Don’t dump out a sack of dice to pick your favorites. Pack so that you can drop stuff on the table and start.

And ask your players to take their f$&%ing garbage when they leave the table.

Be a Clockwatcher

Second, have a clock handy. And live and die by that clock. Don’t assume you’ll be able to see a clock where you are. Keep your cell phone out on the table — behind the screen — and tap it to check the time continuously.

Keep a timeline in the back of your head. Saying goodbye and breaking down the table? Figure that takes ten or fifteen minutes. Figure you need the same amount of time to let your resolution breathe. That means, your climax needs to end twenty to thirty minutes before the end of the session. And that means it’s got to start an hour or more before the end of the session. See how this works?

The point is this: when the clock strikes one hour to go — unless you’re really compressing s$&% — you need to be starting the climax. Always know how much time you’ve got left and how much time you need to wrap up an encounter, scene, or event. And if things start to run long, wrap them up. Fudge them, narrate the ending, cut them, whatever the hell you’ve got to do.

Just Make a F$&%ing Choice: The Art of Distribution Pregens

Want to waste the first forty minutes of your Time-Slot Game on useless bulls$&%? Just toss your stack of pregenerated characters in the middle of the table and invite everyone to choose their favorites. Hell, if you’ve got a particularly wishy-washy group of politely indecisive randos — or a nitpicky pile of optimizing powergamers — you won’t have to run a game at all. You won’t have time. Point is: do not let a player see a pregen before they’ve already decided to play it. And do not let the table discuss their character choices as a group. Not unless you want a four-hour nap.

How do you dole out pregens? It’s easy. First, prepare a list of simple, one-line descriptions of your pregens. Read them aloud. As you read each, put a miniature or token on the table representing the character. If you don’t have minis or tokens, use index cards with the descriptions written on them.

Once you’ve presented the whole list, pause for one beat. Just long enough for someone to blurt out a preference. If someone blurts something like, “oh, that sorcerer sounds neat,” hand them the sorcerer and say, “great, you’re it.”

If someone blurts two things — “I like to play rangers and rogues” — ask them which one they want. And make them choose. But do not let them look at the character sheets. “Okay, which do you want? The ranger or the rogue?”

Once you’ve gotten the fast-talkers assigned, point at someone, point at anyone — I don’t care who you pick or how — just point at someone and say, “okay, now, which character do you want to play?” If there’s hemming and hawing, reassure them it does not matter. “Look,” you can say, “it doesn’t matter who plays what; I can TPK any party, I’m really good at D&D.” If they try to pass or if they won’t choose, you choose for them. “Okay, you can’t handle complex decisions: fighter it is. Next!”

That’s the correct way to hand out pregens. Not just at Time-Slot Games, but at all games, now and forever, wherever you are. The end.

Unskippable: Cutscenes, Summaries, and Transitions

The last of Angry’s Time-Slot Gaming Bestest Practices is also the ugliest. It’s the one I’m going to get the most pissing and moaning about. And I don’t care. I ain’t going to listen to that s$&%. So don’t bother.

It’s like this: when you’re running your own little campaign at home with your little friends around mommy’s dining room table and you’ve got all the time in the world and you know everyone will be back next week to continue the game, you can let your players have free will and agency and s$&% like that.

But when you’re sitting at one of thirty tables in a hotel ballroom that smells like a jockstrap and you’ve got one hour left to finish three encounters before you’ve got to clear the table for the mouthbreather with the Pathfinder Society tee shirt and an entire f$&%ing game store shelf worth of supplements, you’ve got to do some drastic, ugly s$&% sometimes.

And that means Cutscening.

Cutscening is the art of telling the players what happens to their characters without their input. It’s an ugly thing for a GM to do, but that doesn’t make it less necessary.

Cutscening’s useful for opening and closing scenes in Time-Slot Games. The scene-setting, mission-setup, and resolution bulls$&%.

My NonCon game started with a short narration wherein I described the PCs’ previous adventures and their three-day stay in the town of Hearth. I exposited everything the players needed to know about the town, including how no one goes out at night and how the guards attack anyone on the streets after dark and how the town’s leadership was mysteriously sick-and-absent or whatever.

Likewise, it ended with my describing how the werewolf’s last words warned the party something bad was going down at the temple and how they hauled a$& over there to join the tail-end of a fight between good-aligned gargoyles and evil soldiers and how they encountered the NPCs from the start and what was really going on. And I also described how the missing rogue PC reappeared as a wight terrorizing the town’s cemetery days later. And how the ranger PC who’d gotten bitten by the werewolf started having blackouts.

Mistakes were made.

Cutscenes are also useful for ending encounters early or skipping entire scenes. One of my groups was slow to get their a$&es out of the inn and rolled like s$&% during the fight with the guards so I had to skip the entire Through the Streets challenge. Once they chose a destination and gave me a remotely workable plan for sneaking through the back alleys, I described how they brilliantly evaded the guards and reached the cemetery.

No dice rolls needed. No choices. No input. Just, “good job, your plan succeeded; let me tell you what it looked like.”

Conventions Always Leave You Feeling Dirty

Conventions and game clubs and game day events? They’re great. They’re great for sharing bite-sized nuggets of gaming fun with strangers. They’re great for introducing new people to the hobby. They’re great for playing — or running — games you don’t normally get to play — or run. They’re great for hanging out with fellow gamers and playing games.

They just suck for actual gaming. The constraints necessary to make those events happen? They’re all terrible for RPGs. And you’ve got to accept that.

Angry’s Time-Slot Gaming Bestest Practices involve lots of things you — as a GM — know are just plain wrong. Things like not managing player expectations, rushing people through seemingly important character choices, and things like taking away agency and interaction. I know they’re dirty, ugly things. But I’ve also run a butt-ton of convention games and game store events over the years. And people love my games. I know that sounds like bragging, but humility is for people who aren’t good at things.

The point is, I know all this s$%& runs counter to everything you know as a GM. It runs counter to lots of s$&% I’ve told you over the years. But Time-Slot Gaming is a very different beast. But if you handle it the way it has to be handled, everyone’s still going to have a great time. Even the ones you have to yell at.