EThe Darkest Hour would be considered a full 'adventure' in game mechanic terms, it has about 5 scenes (off the top of my head). Whereas I would consider that a one-shot/delve/Con game not an adventure. This is probably even more exacerbated because I often use Adv Path type things.

The Darkest Hour has three scenes, that break at (I hope) pretty intuitive places story-wise: whenever the PCs get enough clues to move forward (and decide it's time to act on their clues), they move forward...into the next scene. When the story-arc is complete, the adventure is over.

Yeah I went back and checked, I thought there were more. I was writing off the top of my head from one read through...
And as I said that is not what I would normally consider an adventure. However I have changed my expectations as to what constitutes an adventure for FC

1/2 threat level instead of full threat level is NOT no difference.

I did get a bit confused about the supposed errata, I went back into the rule book to see if there was something I missed!

LOL 
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I have more medieval history books than gaming books...and that is saying something!

What type of books? There are books and there are books, some have a lot of Osprey stuff, others only tomes accepted by the lords of the academia, and some guides designed to appeal to the mortal man.

Yes all of the above

Yeah my normal way of looking at it a campaign would be several linked seasons. From 1st to 20th/30th/boredom of the campaign (or, more correctly, desire to play different rules )

Now, the beautiful thing about *craft is, it doesn't really matter whose definition of adventure is correct, as long as you and your players are having fun Smiley.

well that applies to all games IMO!

But yeah I need to think of an adventure as an episode and not the season (which is my normal thought pattern)

Cheers

I have more medieval history books than gaming books...and that is saying something!

@ Oleyo: yeah I like the whole scene thing, but as I said above, I think my scale was out by a magnitude of about 5!

Cheers again guys.

EDIT: Having read my own reply it seems that my concept of what is an 'adventure' is different than the FC assumption. I am now getting there. In the case of a classic DnD style module, it would have several adventures within it, as in each section. The Darkest Hour would be considered a full 'adventure' in game mechanic terms, it has about 5 scenes (off the top of my head). Whereas I would consider that a one-shot/delve/Con game not an adventure. This is probably even more exacerbated because I often use Adv Path type things.

So am I now singing from the right song sheet? I need to scale down my perception of what constitutes an 'adventure' when applying this a a game term in FC.


Thanks for all your great replies. as I said, I just need to make the mental leap away from 4E/DnD I am totally happy that they are flexible time wise, but it still seems the description on p330 is wonky.

I think the thing that threw me the most was 3 to 5 scenes per adventure. As an adventure often lasts for 2 or 3 levels (with downtime in it); it made no sense to me. I shall completely ignore that bit of the rule book. Even with all your descriptions and help 3 to 5 scenes per adventure only makes sense for a full real life day adventure (i.e. an all Sunday session). Krensky's scene use makes the most sense to me, probably 2 or so 'combats' (encounters, interactions, skill challenges, whatever) to reach ONE objective/ solve ONE problem (or a few minor related ones).

@Aragathor: sorry I don't understand what oWoD is, but the time frame you are describing for a scene would happen at least a dozen times in any adventure I run.

@Krensky:Great desription and that what scenes would seem right to me, but (even though you have described 7 scenes) that would not constitute an adventure to me, maybe a third or so, at most.

@Agent333: Yeah I am happy with the flexibility, just lost a bit on the scale.

@Craft_Alex: You also use the example I did: move to a new level of the dungeon. With a session longer than a scene are you saying that you clear out 2 levels of a multi level dungeon every session?!?! That is the sticking point, it doesn't gel. A level of a dungeon is multiple sessions, at least 2, so a scene must be less than a level more like the 3 rooms occupied by a common type of creature (yes I am continuing the dungeon bashing analogies 'cos it makes it simpler and strips it down to basics). It appears that what is written in the rule book about scenes per adventure dies not gel with what the guys here use, or (in fact) yourself! Is this 'cos you guys have played other Crafty games which don't recommend 3-5 scenes per adventure, but much much more..

@ Antilles: Your adventure and scene description is great, but that is a really short adventure. That, to me, is a description of a Con type one-shot or minor part of one adventure. I would expect to do what you have described about 3 or 5 times- oh noes my personal  scene 'scale' is whole adventures

It is late and I am bound for bed but I reckon this is going to keep me awake in a 'baffled' condition...

Can some one please give me a definition of what a 'scene' is. Obviously the 'Scene' is a very important concept, as so many things are per scene/til the end of the scene/etc. I originally thought it was an encounter, in the 4E sense. Probably over in 5 or 10 minutes of combat or interaction or whatever. I was reading the PDF on my eReader, which is not great at jumping between pages, so I was reading it front to back, waiting for the definition to appear in it's own place. However I have the book now (YAY) and looked for 'scene' in the index... not there.

Oh dear.

But: I found 'scenes and encounters' on page 330 which says there is about 3 to 5 scenes per adventure! Not at all like a 4E encounter, a 5 encounter 'adventure' isn't even a tenth of an adventure. So reading this section leaves it very flexible but definitely quite long. To use an old school analogy I reckon a scene might be an entire level of a dungeon. That sort of scale.

So now I get really really confused. Lots of conditions (which is where I had read up to before I got the book to flip about in) last til the end of the scene! So the PC is going to be baffled/bleeding/enraged/etc for hours if not days??!?!?!?! For example the PC gets fixated by a magic trap, he cannot beat a DC 20 (no action die left and he had penalties to his resolve), so until the end of the scene.... which is when the PCs manage to solve the scenes 'sequence of events or problems' that PC is stuck staring at a wall! In reality til the next session and the PC gets his Action Dice back.

I know that is a pretty extreme/crazy example but I cannot seem to make the mental leap between what a scene is described as (a related series of 'encounters') and some conditions that span that period. Some conditions make sense to last longer, like fatigued, but a lot don't.

I would appreciate any enlightenment, it maybe my brain is just stuck in 4E mode.

ENVY ENVY ENVY

Now I am TICKLED TICKLED TICKLED

Added a paragraph about weapons.

Awesome section, thanks. I am particularly pleased that the falchion is not mechanically a 2 handed scimitar

Just casting around for an answer to my previous query concerning fire brave ogres and actually changing size when they disguise themselves as another race, being shapeshifters and all.

prototype00

I don't have the book in front of me right now, but if it doesn't say they ignore the size penalties, then they don't ignore size penalties.

You mean you don't have the entire 400+ pages memorised? Poor show, old chap

Got my copy today! 

It's so shiny! 

And the spine is so pretty... and all the art looks better on paper... and and it's awesome! 

ENVY ENVY ENVY

Well you can take a leaf from one of my house ruled options from 4E. I found minions died to easy in 4E so I made super-minions, instead of one hit one kill, I made it 1 hit = bloodied (we use a counter for this) and the next kills. So I would use some variation of this.

Either
a) 1 failed save, target is flat footed/shaken/fatigued?. Next hit auto kills
or
b)1 failed save, target is flat footed/shaken/fatigued?. Next fail is death.

I like the idea of minions/standard characters but to many one shot kills are not good IMO. I would also mix and match. Real shabby standard NPCs go down on the first fail, others use the rules I suggested above.

Might I briefly pimp my supplement, The Blackcloak Watch? It's all about running a fantasy-world city watch. You might find it helpful. ^_^

Too bad its not in pdf.  I wouldnt mind to give it a look, but time and shipping cost makes it too much for me, i'm afraid. I'm gonna start the game this week, if everythings goes by the plan.

It is in PDF and cheap as chips $1
http://enworld.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=51020&filters=0_0_0

I have it and it is good.