Holiday one-off game... Ideas?

[Melba Toast]

I'm getting together with old friends for a nostalgic one-off AD&D game at the holidays. It'll have to be short (<10 hours) and closed-ended since we live all live at the far ends of the Earth.

Was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for running such a short game?

 

[fba827]

a dungeon crawl.

think of a handful of badguys you'd want to use. then place them and make up the rooms as you go along.
have "the last room" be

Or, for something more codified. A simple fetch quest --- "help my daughter's been kidnapped by the troll cave!" so they have adventures enroute to the cave, some skill use for mountain climbing. then at the cave they fight trolls and kobolds. only to realize the troll was just getting victims for the dragon. so now they have to fight the dragon to get to the farmer's daughter (and the dragon treasure!).

 

[Fifth Element]

Dungeon crawls work well. I'm running a holiday one-shot next week. I converted Myriador's mostly-okay (and partly-terrible) 3E conversion of Deathtrap Dungeon to 4E. Pregenerated characters, very little setup or backstory, and go!

 

[CAFRedblade]

You could tie the dungeon crawl to one of the many holidays celebrated in December, although that may be cheesy

 

[Alzrius]

You could tie the dungeon crawl to one of the many holidays celebrated in December, although that may be cheesy

I personally always get a kick out of this idea. I can't wait to introduce the Night of the Krampus into my game.

 

[mac1504]

My favorite (and I think our group's) one-off was a game in where everyone, save for one player, played a half dragon PC that had been brought together to rescue one of their parents. The non half dragon PC was a spy/traitor that sought to kill the parent dragon. All along their journey, I crafted a subtle chance for each of the other party member's to discover the traitor's intentions. The traitor died at the end, but killed off nearly half of the party before he did. They still talk about that game to this day.

The other idea is one which I've always wanted to run (saw on this board many years ago), and works best if you have some good min/maxers in your group: tell your group to roll up characters, but they have to select a monster race . When they arrive to play, swap their rolled up monster PCs for your pre-rolled PCs and make "their" PCs the villains of the adventure.

 

[Aeolius]

I can't wait to introduce the Night of the Krampus into my game.

GAH!!! I was just about to mention Krampus !!

Though I am thinking of making a krampus the rare male offspring of a night hag.

 

[Kunimatyu]

I'm going to run Savage Worlds, with a twist inspired partially by barsoomcore.

The PCs will be members of a ninja clan sent to stop a crew of pirates from traveling to the Isle of Dread and resurrecting the Pirate King.

It's....not going to be a very serious game.