Has anyone run it? Do you think it's suitable for a one shot (about 5 hours) for a gm and players completely new to the system?

I'm itching to get Desolation to the table and I may have that chance on Saturday

Good luck with that! I'm eager to hear how it's received.

As I recall, it would fit in a 5-hour slot, especially if you use the signature characters in the book. We ran it in four-hour con slots with new players, and sometimes made it all the way through and other times came very close to the end -- so a 5-hour slot should work.

Depending on how "talky" your group is, it could easily be a 5 hour game.

As Jamie said, we ran it at convention for a year or two in 4 hour slots, but I found myself handwaving past stuff that players could have role-played through with more time. With all that being said, we also have to take out time to explain both the mechanics and the setting to people unfamiliar with Desolation/Ubiquity

I think it is mainly my fault as a GM, but I tend to have to rush things at the end of convention games because I like to interact with the players and play up the NPCs. One more than one occassion, I've had to explain what was going to happen next while people scooped up dice to head to their next game.

I decided to wait. I'm hoping the debut of Desolation to the group goes really well so I want to make sure I'm fully prepared for it

In the meantime I'm going to run some solo stuff for my wife so I have the system down backwards and forwards before I run it for the group as a whole.

...and if you like writing at all, with your role playing, we mights be able to hook you up with a text based Desolation game. *grin*

Hullo, Jgerman,



That scenario would be "A Few Good Men", right?

Yes, that scenario works really well as a starting adventure. While the scenario was designed and ran as a 4-hour adventure at conventions and demos, the scenario can easily work in a 5-hour slot if the players play up the talkative and interaction aspects of their characters and all. If you plan to use it as a one-shot adventure, you can really use the pre-generated sample characters from the rulebook as the player characters.

Hope that helps.

I ran the adventure with three players who didn't know Desolation before and sample characters in four hours, therefore I think it will be no problem to run it in about five hours as you said.
The players liked it - the adventure as well as the Ubiquity system and the setting of Desolation - and we will now start a real campaign and already found a fourth player who will join us on that.
I think it's a good starting scenario though I had to improvise a little bit as the characters didn't act in the way the adventure assumed but it was much fun.
So I wish you good luck with your first Desolation session!