Eleven Players, One Hour, Let's GO!

Some of you may be aware that I'm french and studying english. The others know also know. For a class called "english conversation", which is just what it says on the tin, I decided to do my presentation on adventure games, and simply run one instead of talking about what they are. I had a little less than an hour, eleven players - most of whom had never played D&D in their life or even heard of it - and a pair of six-siders.

Characters

Because most people didn't really know what I was up to, we didn't spend any time talking about the PCs, I just handed them these villagers and explained the starting situation.

The teacher wanted to play too, so I had him roll a character - he ended up with a strong but clumsy wizard called Gandalf's Cousin. I gave him a sleep spell and a staff that lights up in the dark.

What Happened
Somewhere in Bretonnia, in the little town of Brexit (players named their village), the silver plague has struck most inhabitants. Whoever is left bravely volunteered to go seek the only known cure: the tears of a dragon! According to ancient dwarven legends, one such dragon - Fizer (another player-named one) sleeps beneath Death Frost Mountain.

First, they had to decide whether to try and cross the Weald, a dark and magical forest, or to spend time building a boat to go upriver and avoid the woods. Fearing they might find "ents and goblins" in the woods, they went with the boat plan. Gandalf's Cousin used his sleep spell to micro-manage all the villagers' sleep schedule and have them working extra hard the rest of the time to build the boat quickly.

On the boat, none of the villagers were paying much attention to what was in front of them, so they crashed into a river kraken. Some clumsy characters fell off-board and a few others rushed to help - the one with the net dragged them back up, and Gandalf's Cousin slept the Kraken.

They finished the final leg of the voyage on foot, and heard a cry of distress. A little more than half of the players voted to stay out of it, thinking it might be a trap. They were right. The others begrudgingly abandoned the "poor maiden in distress" screaming in the distance.

Once at the foot of the mountain, the party brainstormed a plan to deal with the dragon. It doesn't show on the PDF as it was a last-minute addition on my end but those characters with only bad traits got special abilities, one of which was "seer: visions of possible futures". The seer used this ability to get an idea of what would happen were the party to simply go in without a plan. They saw the dragon waking and burning them all to ashes.

Eventually, a plan was conceived: the lutist would play "mad world" to the dragon in its sleep to make it sad. They went in, and the dragon didn't cry but rolled on its back (it was still asleep though). So someone gouged his eye out with a shovel to make it cry. Then it woke up and started to breathe in after yelling at them, preparing a burst of deadly fire. So someone threw the stinky cheese in its nostrils. That distracted it long enough for everyone to run away back onto the boat. We had no time left, so I assume the dragon was allergic to that cheese and couldn't go after them, too tired or sick or something. End!

Post-Mortem
People in class are pretty quiet and reserved, so handling a group this size wasn't really tricky. Keeping things rolling was relatively easy too as the players were almost entirely reactive. I'd give them problems and ask for a solution, they'd talk between each others and offer ideas, and sometimes I'd explain further context to help them. Some clever use of equipment, and I think a good understanding of the whole "adventure game" thing. People often chuckled or outright laughed, and the final stretch with the dragon in particular seemed to have them somewhat invested and scared at the prospect of getting fried by the giant lizard. Sadly, players almost exclusively relied on what was on their (minimalist) sheet and didn't seem to really understand that they could approach situations however they wanted, treating it more like a board game or CYOA. Overall, I'd say it was a success as they did say they had fun.