Milestones and Game Play Hours

[devonapple]

Gamers can vary greatly in how much time they can devote to an RPG. Some people can fit in a monthly game of about nine hours, others maybe have weekly or semiweekly games of only 3-4 hours.

I'm trying to plot game time investment against the Milestone setup in Dresden Files RPG, but the values are pretty subjective. Has anyone come up with a mechanism for determining when Milestones happen? Major milestones can happen once every 2-3 Sessions (which I assume are about 5-6 hours each) as well as at the conclusion of a scenario or major plotline equivalent to one of Harry’s case files.

If you had a plotline you considered equivalent to a Dresden case file, and it was resolved in about 6 sessions (about 5-6 hours each), would you have given a Major Milestone halfway through, and then another at the conclusion? Or, depending on the quality of the gameplay, three Milestones?

[UmbraLux]

Probably doesn't help much but I'd go with "when it makes sense".  In other words when they complete something.  Could be a minor milestone for a couple sessions in a row and then four or five without a milestone.

Guess I'm saying I'd follow the story's pace instead of basing it on real life sessions.

[Richard_Chilton]

A plot line that takes 6 - 8 hours isn't one of Dresden's books - it's one of the short stories.  Also, if you look at the write up of him, Dresden doesn't always get a power up at the end of each book.

Personally, I think setting up a Big Bad and treating dealing with it as a book is the way to go.

That said, whatever works for your group works for your group.  There really isn't a hard standard.

Richard

[Selrach]

Technically you could hit a major milestone an hour into a game. The tricky thing about milestones is that they are entirely story dependent and have little to do with time investment. If I remember all that players reliably can do between games is fiddle with their skill arrangement.

So the correct answer is what ever works for you.

[newtinmpls]

This is the set up:
"I'm trying to plot game time investment against the Milestone setup in Dresden Files RPG, but the values are pretty subjective. Has anyone come up with a mechanism for determining when Milestones happen? Major milestones can happen once every 2-3 Sessions (which I assume are about 5-6 hours each) as well as at the conclusion of a scenario or major plotline equivalent to one of Harry’s case files."

So this is the actual question:
"If you had a plotline you considered equivalent to a Dresden case file, and it was resolved in about 6 sessions (about 5-6 hours each), would you have given a Major Milestone halfway through, and then another at the conclusion? Or, depending on the quality of the gameplay, three Milestones?"

First answer: No.

Partly this is because I'm an old-style gamer used to Harnmaster (as detail-rich as FATE is detail poor; or to put it anther way, Harn is all about splitting and FATE about lumping). The characters run/fight/seek - they are (ideally, anyway) INVOLVED in the scenario, and invested in who they see themselves as, and "the way it is" and they don't have the time, or mental space to fully digest and deal with all the internal fallout (which is one way I look at milestones).

A story, would be something that had enough detail in terms of what the characters did, learned about the world, and learned about themselves and each other to be comparable to a novel. Usually at the end of the novel, Harry does some sort of introspection thing that kind of reiterates what he "got" out of all this. (like when Tera leaves him her cloack at the end of Fool Moon and he muses over it). That inner moment, which I dont' see as happening "in" th estory, is when I would award major milestones. That being said, I could see a poitn where I would do the equivalent of awarding double milestones, becuse I think it was earned.

Dian

[devonapple]

Excellent summation, newtinmpls!

I have since consulted the Glossary about what they consider a "session" to be (I know, revolutionary, huh?) and the DFRPG considers a session to be 3-4 hours (not the 5-6 hours I usually associate with an RPG session), so my gaming group is (assuming low interruption rates) doing alright as far as the book is concerned.

What my game happens to be benefiting/suffering from is having a lot of scenes per day, as I am trying my best to emulate the over-the-top Dresden pace without outright killing them. They are learning/doing/expanding a lot, but the game has only been going on for about 3 days game time.

[newtinmpls]

"What my game happens to be benefiting/suffering from is having a lot of scenes per day, as I am trying my best to emulate the over-the-top Dresden pace without outright killing them. They are learning/doing/expanding a lot, but the game has only been going on for about 3 days game time."

Very cool! Some of the best gaming I ever did (long ago Harn Campaign in Moria - side note: as old gamers, my sweetie and I almost always have a "moria" and a "keep on the borderlands" in some version, somewhere in every gaming universe. Anyway, the gaming sessions were running about 10 hours a night (long term group of freaky gamers) and over the course of three such nights we went through .... maybe half a day in "moria" (one version of it) running for our lives most of the time. It was wonderful. The last session was so intense I think we yakked for about another three hours afterward just needing to decompress.

Anyway, that still wouldn't be a milestone for me, since that was just the most intense part of the story - there was still the rest of the story/plotline, dealing with sub plots and what not.

[TheMouse]

I'd hand out Milestones as they seem appropriate, without paying any attention to how long sessions were and such. You get a minor each session, a significant when it seems like a story has passed, and a major when something big happens. How many hours those things take simply don't enter into the equation.

[Wolfwood2]

I don't have a conceptual problem with "when appropriate", but the others in my group (including the Referee) didn't care for it.  So we set down some hard numbers, and the Ref tries to build the plot around, having a climax arrive at the appropriate point.

We get a Minor Milestone every session, a Moderate every three sessions, and a Major every three Moderate (or every nine sessions).  Each session is about four hours long.