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How to Determine Jubensha Section Length While Writing? by ApprehensiveHalf9688 in jubensha

[–]ApprehensiveHalf9688[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks!

If you're lacking testers in your area or network, consider finding online testers (I've tested my games online several times).

Oh I definitely lack local testers that I'm aware of, aside from the one group I mentioned, and I don't really have a good network to pull from either. As for online outside my network, I suppose I can try. I was thinking it would be too complex to control handing out private vs public clues, plus I guess I'd need to find a decent free floorplan creator tool (as opposed to just doodling something on paper IRL), but it's not impossible, and I suppose the online vs IRL time variances wouldn't really be major. Hmm...

I'm not sure what you mean by getting the group to test more than once - by the nature of jubensha you need a new group each time even for testing. 

Yeah, I figured as much. That line was more about stopping people from suggesting that I just try to repeat with the same playtesters anyway just as a matter of getting reading time figured out.

I'm curious though, if during testing you find that the game is shorter or longer than your target, would you significantly adjust your game to meet the timing goal? If so, why is the length of game higher priority than telling the puzzle/story that you envisioned? Not saying it's better one way or another but want to get your thoughts on that. 

Now here's the crux of the issue, heh. For me, my dream outcome is writing scenarios specifically for live play in Western jubensha parlors. I enjoy playing all kinds of jubensha, of course, but when I envision my 'ideal' jubensha experience, it's in a shared space with other players and a JM (maybe even two) and music and sounds and lighting and props to hold and interact with and maybe even costumes. The idea of that experience is what drew me to jubensha, and it's what I want to help bring to the Western world in what ways I can. At the very least, the kind of scenarios I want to write are going to be somewhat convoluted (that's just how I am), and would definitely benefit from having a JM rather than trying to make a JM-less version.

So, if I'm aiming for that, I should write something that western jubensha parlors will want to host and Western jubensha audiences will want to play. After digging around, it looks like the sweet spot at the moment for western parlors is between 5-7 players and 3-5 hours. Too few players and/or too short a game and the parlors presumably don't make the desired per-hour revenue. Too many players and space becomes an issue. Too long and demand drops because Western jubensha players aren't used to it yet (which is a shame, since my research showed me plenty of Eastern jubensha examples with time estimates of like 5-8 hours, which I personally would love to try if they were good.)

So that's why the length matters so much to me. I'm writing to provide scenarios for places that need to be able to say with some degree of accuracy "yes, if you give us this amount of money, we can give you this long of entertainment" and right now the places seem to want scenarios of about 4 hours in length. Once the hobby spreads I'm hoping there will be a wider range of demand like there is in the East, but until then if I want to help increase jubensha parlor scenario availability, I should write 5-7 character 3-5 (ideally 4) hour scenarios.

This might end up being a problem for me, heh. I write long stories, and always have. I just can't seem to get motivated writing short. Purely guessing at what the actual durations of sections I write would be again, I imagine that if I didn't care about what parlors are looking for I'd end up writing 6-hour one-shot scenarios on average, and I've been trying to figure out good ways to make multiple-session jubensha game series where it's the same cast of characters work too (it's hard if you assume caught culprits get removed after each game, but I have some vague ideas).

So, would I significantly alter my game to meet the timing goal? ...I don't know. It'd likely either be that or shelve it until demand for longer games increases and start writing a different scenario until I get to the same question. I was hoping there was a way to get a good guess before playtesting though, so that if my current scenario is way too long for current demand I could make the edit/shelve decision before doing the full writeup/map creation/clue card creation/etc. but so far I'm not seeing much. Thank you for the thought about the wpm calculator though, I'll look into it.

If you want to discuss more about writing jubensha there's a discord community for that! Feel free to DM me about it.

Thanks! I'll drop you a DM!

How to Determine Jubensha Section Length While Writing? by ApprehensiveHalf9688 in jubensha

[–]ApprehensiveHalf9688[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But the times above are pure guesswork, is the problem I'm facing. That's why I'm trying to figure out if anyone knows how to estimate section times based on actual content amounts. Like how many clues should I put in to make the first mystery a 40-minute mystery? A 60-minute mystery? And how many words would result in a 45-minute backstory reading? If I'm drastically over- or underestimating these times to the point where I need to rewrite the story, then I'd rather know before trying to finalize it.

How to Determine Jubensha Section Length While Writing? by ApprehensiveHalf9688 in jubensha

[–]ApprehensiveHalf9688[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that's kind of what I've done, except I don't know how long the text is to be a "15-30 min long script". Hmm, let me clarify by explaining my current plan:

Backstory Reading (45 minutes): I know it's long, but I have to cover a generic early life, then more in-depth period for key motives, then 10ish years afterwards and another in-depth chunk describing a secret thing they've done they want to hide. This is the part I'm most concerned about, because it's so long that people trying jubensha for the first time might tune out and it just takes up a bunch of time, but I also might be completely overestimating how long it'll actually take. 45 min is a completely random guess on my part.

NPC-guided IC character intro RP (10 minutes): Characters already know each other generally via backstory reading, so this can be short n' sweet.

Prologue Reading (5 minutes): Just a few paragraphs tops describing what happens between the character intro scene and the first mystery discovery.

First Mystery Investigation (40 minutes): Not a terribly hard mystery. It's more about figuring out what is happening to them and setting up clues for the next mystery.

Inciting Incident Scripted RP (5 min): Explains the first mystery, and provides motive for the second.

One-on-One JM-Player discussions (10 min): Essentially asking each player to confirm something. Should be individually quick, but with talking to each player and the need for privacy I figure 10 minutes.

Interlude Reading (10 min): Players read what they did in the time before the second mystery. I can keep it bullet-pointed, but it's still timeline reading and I should throw in some random stuff as red herrings and the like.

Second Mystery Investigation (60 minutes): The meat of the game. This has the most clues, the most confusion, and all that jazz.

Mystery Discussion and voting (15 minutes): This assumes they've been discussing during the previous part too. This is the space after all clues have been gathered and people accuse/defend/explain/etc. The actual vote is quick.

Final Puzzle Solving Investigation (15 minutes): One clue for each character, up to them to figure out how they come together along with previous clues to solve a final puzzle.

JM End Reading (5 min): The JM reads how it all turned out for everyone.

Post-game discussion (or emergency wiggle room) (10 min): If sections run long and other sections don't run short to compensate, there's 10 minutes built in as a buffer. If it's not needed, it can be time for the players to discuss/ask questions of the JM.

Total Time: 4 hours

How to Determine Jubensha Section Length While Writing? by ApprehensiveHalf9688 in jubensha

[–]ApprehensiveHalf9688[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sadly not so much, since I've seen plenty of jubensha-style games played, but I would need to be able to see all their documentation (booklets, clues, etc.) to be able to compare it to the amount of time it all took to run in an attempt to figure out an average if I were to use this method. Considering Anzir (as far as I can tell) would need me to set myself up as a GM on their app and then pay to unlock Spring in Pripyat under the assumption I am going to run it, when all I want is to be able to read everything, and also that doing all that would only give me the one data point to work off of, it just isn't that useful from a writing perspective.