Alright, its been a while since I played Dungeons & Dragons, but I've got the itch to play again with my friends. However, I'm not interested in some long campaign, or role-playing, or any of that crap.

I am going to lay out my plan, and would like feedback from readers if they see a problem or have an interesting suggestion.

* I want to run a single night session of old, red book, demihumans are a class, gold gives you XP, basic DnD for first level characters.

* I want it to be ran in a single night session and for things to move fast.

* Character creations needs to be fast.

* No role playing. Straight hack in slash, solve riddles, avoid traps, find loot; that sort of thing.

* It will be moderately competitive. The player that gets out of the dungeon with the most loot wins.

* I'm going to buy props for the treasure. I can buy a 1000 plastic gold coins, plastic or glass gems, fake pearl necklaces, etc.. for cheap.

* Gold coins found are evenly divided between all players, but other loot, such as gems and jewelry, are then bid on at the end of each dungeon level.

* Characters learn the value of their loot after bidding, and gain XP, and possibly a level at that time.

* If a character dies, the player can re-roll a new one and get him or her back in the dungeon immediately, though they lose the loot previous character had.

Thats the basic plan.

Could I get some feedback from you guys on where you find things slow down the most in a game, and a possible way to streamline them? I really don't want time wasted and trivial things that won't add to the game.

It is quite possible some people will be playing DnD for the first time, so advice on how to get them up and running would be nice.

Also, level 1 heroes can die very quickly, so tips on how to keep it challenging without wiping the party out first encounter would be appreciated too.

This actually looks like fun, though I assume you are looking at 1e rules. I'm sure you'll be able to find a crew pretty quickly! Things like this are a nice change of pace from the typical run of things.

Character creation will be your big slow down. I would lessen the time needed by giving everyone full hp (one less roll and increases survival). If you really want, give characters double max hp at 1st level, or a standard max hp + 10 for everyone.

Also, give everyone a standard set of attributes (i.e. everyone gets 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, and 8 to distribute to their attributes). Again, if you want to increase survivability, give them higher stats to work with.

Streamline the "equipping" part of character creation by having standard starting equipment packages. For example:

Kit #1 contains 1 longsword, 1 shield, 1 suit of leather armor, 1 backpack, 1 rope, 1 torch, etc

Kit #2 contains 2 shortswords, 1 suit of leather armor, 1 backpack, 1 rope, 1 torch, etc

For magic-users, have a standard spells known package, where you assign most of the spells and maybe let the player choose 0 - 2 spells (depending on how much choice you want to give them).

Streamline the bidding for gems/jewels by setting an automatic bid increase, that scales up as less players bid. For example, let say you have 4 players:

1. minimum bid for a gem/jewel starts at 100 coins.
2. all players interested in bidding roll a d6; bidding order follows from highest to lowest, with the highest roller begining the with the minimum bid.
3. if all 4 players are bidding, the bidding goes up by 10 coins each bid; if there are only 3, bidding goes up by 20 coins; if there are only 2, bidding goes up by 50 coins.

Streamline the hack n' slash part by making sure you have stat information handy for all your encounters, both random and planned. The less time you have to spend looking up information in the monster manual, the better.

Also, know what treasure will be found at each encounter and have the XP value of each gem/jewel pre-assigned.

Streamline the initiative process of combat by rolling one dice for the players and one for the monsters and adjust each by their initiative mod (or DEX bonus). You can streamline this further by using the same rolls for the whole encounter.

Streamline the combat process by telling players they have 10 seconds (or whatever amount of time you want to give) to decide what their character is doing each round.

There's some initial ideas for you! Enjoy!

Ayrn

AYRN!!!

How do you have time to post a conducive streamlining here, but not enough to post to my own game?!

Though...your ideas are sound, and I would strongly encourage a system like this, myself, to make things run efficiently, and as well as preventing unfair munchkin-typing that would obviously skew power in one character's favour due to somebody being a rules-monster with the start-up.