I think it might have been Gregor who, when talking about the 1 hour slots for the IGT at Conpulsion last year, quite correctly described them as "the bastard child of a 15 minute demo and a full con game" (I may be paraphrasing here and it may not have been Gregor who said this!). In the main, that's pretty much on the money.

A 1 hour game allows you to demo the game as you would with a 15 minuute game but with greater freedom to give people that extra bit of screen time and a bit more chance to input into the situation.

As an example, my hour long Dust devils game at the IGT last year involved a disparate group of outlaws arriving in a dusty town to find three former accomplices about to be hung. There wwas no need for detailed setup, people instantly got what the situation was: it's a classic Western scene. Within the frame of an hour, everyone got (as I remember) 2 good moments where they could narrate and get screen time and engage in at least one conflict. They pretty much had to choose their characters path at the start (kill the sheriff, rescue the men about to be hung, take out their fellow outlaws, run for the hills or whatever course of action they wanted to take). One of the great things was that the setup and the characters forced people, pretty much, to turn in on each other, so the players were guaranteed to have conflict going on almost all the time: the characters were fighting amongst themselves, so there was involvement and action, without having the 'GM vs 2 characters and everyuone sits around for 10 minutes' situation.

Like a 15 minute demo, a 1 hour game needs to have characters that can be grasped staright away and a situation that people will immediately get. You have more freedom to play, but there are still time constraints that must be adhered to.

Hope this helps in some way.

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios