How long does a game take?
About an hour for the first one. Adventure 01 has a sixty-minute core and a two-hour version of the same story, and Adventures 02 and 03 run about ninety minutes as written, with a sixty-minute cut and a two-hour version printed in each. Prep is about five minutes to read the GM Prep section, or fifteen if you also read the boxed text to yourself, and every adventure finishes its story in a single sitting.
What fills the first hour
The hour includes sitting down. Choosing heroes is planned at about ten minutes and usually runs closer to fifteen, because seven sheets get passed round and everybody has an opinion about them. Then comes a short scene in a bakery, one fight down the well, and the rescue of a cat.
If you only have the hour, lay the sheets out before anybody comes to the table. Run it tonight lays the evening out minute by minute.
How much prep before you play
Each adventure opens with a GM Prep section that takes about five minutes to read. Give it fifteen in all if you also read the boxed text to yourself first, which is worth doing so the names come out right when you say them to the table.
You do not have to read the rulebook before the first game. Its welcome page sends a first-time Game Master to the section on taking turns and the one-page summary at the back, and the monsters you need are printed inside the adventure.
Picking the short or the long version
Adventure 01 is a complete story in sixty minutes. For a longer evening it has one clearly marked optional scene, a fight with a grumpy giant spider, and a short list of smaller additions, each with its time marked. Add as many as the table has energy for. You can decide before you start, or wait until the first fight is over and see how the kids are doing.
The rulebook puts the hour at its best for ages six to eight, or for a table that has just got home from school, and the two hours for eight to twelve and weekend afternoons. A table of mostly ten- to twelve-year-olds will find the short version a little tame.
Adventures 02 and 03
The Bridge Toll and Nobody’s Shadow each run about ninety minutes as written. Each one prints a list of cuts that brings it down to about an hour, and a list of expansions that takes it to about two, with the minutes marked against every item.
Neither one needs the others, so a table can start with whichever sounds best. If it is everybody’s first game, the second and third adventures expect the grown-up to teach the attack turn on the spot, and the rulebook gives the words for it.
Stopping when the clock runs out
Every scene is marked with what can be cut, so the ending can be reached early with the story finished. The rulebook asks for every session to end on a win, even a small one, and the cuts are there to make that possible when dinner is ready.
If your kid is flagging partway through, what you need, and how long it takes says what to drop first.
How many evenings the whole kit is
Three, one per adventure, played in any order. The first is an hour or two and the other two are about ninety minutes each. What a hero picks up goes on their sheet in pencil, so the next adventure can start a week or a month later with the same sheets.