D&D 5E How do I one-shot?

[Gilladian]

'Oh yeah sorry, I didn't get round to making a character in the 2 weeks between us deciding to do this and today, I'll just make one quickly now.' *Proceeds to spend the next 40 minutes making a character and the 20 minutes after that making adjustments.

I can guarantee that if you don't do pregens, between 1 and all of your players will do this...

Yes, I suppose that's a risk. So have some pregens ready, but push them to do their own if at all possible.

 

[Uller]

- Make pregens for them or better yet download the starter set pregens and hand them out.

- Start right into the action. Think of the starter set or the 4e starter adventure...set up the adventure and open with a simple encounter so they can learn immediately how the game works, then hit them over the head with a plot...Many people when first trying an RPG don't understand how to role play...they don't know what they can do. A simple encounter gives them a chance to learn the basic flow of the game in an easy to understand way. Once the combat is over it easier for them to put the other pillars of the game in context. "Player A, what do you do?" "I do X" "Ok, Y happens". "Player B, what do you do?" "I do Z"...

- Keep the adventure site based and very small...bandits or a monster attack, get away with some prisoners or valuables, PCs track them down to their lair or camp and destroy them. Avoid killing anyone in the opening encounter! I made this mistake once and that player never came back.

- Finish with a hook to further adventure (bandits work for someone else, monster was sent by someone, etc)

- try to keep the entire first game to about 2 hours (so 2-3 encounters and 1 or 2 RP encounters/problems). Have a rough outline for an investigatory/exploration phase AFTER the initial adventure. If you've hooked them and you have more time to continue playing, order a pizza and let them them explore and investigate the lead in to the next adventure. BOOM. They're hooked.

The starter set adventure is really a nice introduction...goblins ambush you, you track them down to their lair. Within 2 hours you can have defeated one of the bosses in the cave.

 

[jbear]

You could also take a look at something like this: The Mad Manor of Astabar

It was one of the adventures created for the 5e playtest here at ENWorld. I've run it as an introductory adventure for my kids and they had lots of fun with it. You could possibly shorten it (reduce the number of skulls needing to be found for example), start with the action skipping the tavern scene with some tweaking. The encounters aren't lethal but lots of fun ones in there, and some fun curses.

There is a room under a stone to flesh spell, with rats that come to life when the living enter the room. Each round some players and some rats who fail their saves will turn to stone while the others fight on. Even when the rats are all dead the PCs have to get the players out of the room while being flesh before all are turned to stone. There is a coloured bowl of fruit that when you pick up one of the pieces it marks your skin with the colour. Anything you touch then becomes that colour as well. Hehehe! There's a bunch of neat little things going on like that.

Each encounter certainly does not take an hour or even close. If you keep the pace up and keep things chugging along I think you could get through it in 5 hours. Anyway, it's worth a look.

 

[spinozajack]

'Oh yeah sorry, I didn't get round to making a character in the 2 weeks between us deciding to do this and today, I'll just make one quickly now.' *Proceeds to spend the next 40 minutes making a character and the 20 minutes after that making adjustments.

I can guarantee that if you don't do pregens, between 1 and all of your players will do this...

+1

Although you can tell players to email you in advance, or what they want over lunch and get it all done beforehand. Or meet them for 5 minutes to roll their stats and pick from one of the 4 food groups. An intro to 5th edition should be as typical as possible in terms of party makeup. I would also keep some pregens handy just in case. And a copy of their character sheets if they made them in advance because someone always forgets theirs.

I would even consider playing by the Basic D&D rules for a one off. Mechanical complexity slows things down and won't improve the game much for a one-off. I would highly encourage you to enforce that the player who "doesn't care about character creation much" or "the rules", be given a class like Warlock, Champion, Evoker, Sorcerer, or War / life cleric. Or for a healer in the group, you could even do a favored soul because that is simpler and a real cleric to play (less spell choice = much simpler).

I would also advise against any complex moral quandaries because those will slow things to a crawl. I've seen more than my share of sessions have half the time wasted due to decision paralysis. If they are given a fork in the road, make sure there is a ticking time bomb for them to pick within 5 minutes max. Have the door about to be broken down and players have to decide whether to slay their prisoner or to let them go before escaping towards Path A or Path B.

Never make a three-choice path, unless one of them is obviously the wrong choice. (and then if they pick the wrong one, let them suffer the consequences without railroading a success condition). Failure should be a distinct possibility. Don't try to force a "win". That doesn't even result in more fun. Nobody likes knowing that their actions don't matter, and experienced players will figure this out if you are guiding them (subtly or not) towards a sure thing.

If there's any ideal time for a TPK, it's a one shot. Bring an extra NPC along who is a pregen in case one player dies, and make sure that this is a distinct possibility in terms of the challenges they will face. And I don't mean, a slight chance to die in a fair fight. I mean, a chance they will do the wrong thing and get splat. Then you can swoop in with the pregen sheet and say "I will avenge thee!"

Nothing spurs renewed vigor to succeed more than a PC death. D&D is actually better for it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I've been trying unsuccessfully to convince my friends to play D&D with me all semester. The semester is almost over now, but there is hope! A new friend I made says she and her friends have been wanting to play a game but aren't experienced enough to DM. I offered to make an adventure for them, but I'm worried! I've never been that good at making games that don't take forever, especially RPGs! To my memory, only ONE adventure I DMed has ever been finished, and even that must've taken at least a month. My friend seemed to be implying this would be a one-day thing, so I want to run something we can actually finish in a day. She hasn't given me many details yet, but let's assume this means I have around four or five hours to work with, and that character creation will be done beforehand. I have some story ideas, but how do I make sure they can fit in the time allotted?

My advice:

Focus on player choice! You're not trying to sell them on a game world, you're trying to sell them on the experience of being in another world where they can do whatever they want. Do create a high-concept for the game's opening scene ("You're all soldiers in an army, and one morning you roll out of bed to discover that EVERYONE ELSE IN THE ARMY IS DEAD except for your squad. What do you do?"), and after that focus on

1.) giving them information to act on (when you go to explore the general's office, you find his body slumped in a chair with a pistol in his hand and a confession note saying that "I never should have activated Plan Z"), and

2.) saying "yes" to player's ideas as much as possible, and if you can't say "Yes" outright letting them know what it would take for you to say yes. ("Jumping a 10' chasm is hard, but you're strong and quick. If you roll a 6 or more on d20, you'll make it across the chasm, otherwise you'll fall in and maybe die. If you had some kind of way to reduce the distance across the chasm to 7' you could jump over automatically.")

 

[Fralex]

I'm thinking I'll set the adventure up so I always have a way to speed any particular chapter to its conclusion if it takes too long. Like, have a team of enemies chasing them that will catch up and push the plot along if they dawdle. Does this sound like a good way to railroad without railroading?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm thinking I'll set the adventure up so I always have a way to speed any particular chapter to its conclusion if it takes too long. Like, have a team of enemies chasing them that will catch up and push the plot along if they dawdle. Does this sound like a good way to railroad without railroading?

Actually, that does sound a lot like railroading. And what happens if they kill that enemy team, or if the enemy team TPKs them? If think if you're running an adventure with a "plot" that you don't want them to deviate from, you pretty much have to accept that you are railroading them. Either don't do it, or come to terms with what you're doing.

 

[Gilladian]

I would be more likely to work the OTHER way: have your adventure, with a minimum number of encounters - 3 or 4, whatever you think is the fewest you can use to make an adventure work. Then have 2-3 extra encounters or puzzles or traps or whatnot (an interesting NPC?) to insert, if they have made it farther, faster than you expected. In other words, if you have 3 hours to play, and you have 3 scenes or encounters planned, and after the first hour, they've finished scene 2, and you realize you're probably going to finish before your alloted timespan is up, then drop in the puzzle you had prepped but not required for the door into the final lair... or toss in an extra combat with a wandering orc guard who just happens to be passing by at the last moment. That way, if they are dragging and lollygagging around, you can omit that encounter and speed them on their way. NEVER be afraid, in a one-shot, to say "and then, after an hour of (whatever), you reach...(the final destination)". Just the same way you STARTED in the middle of the action, with a one-shot, sometimes it is necessary to condense things that, in a campaign, would be valuable side- or back-story.

 

[Fralex]

Actually, that does sound a lot like railroading. And what happens if they kill that enemy team, or if the enemy team TPKs them? If think if you're running an adventure with a "plot" that you don't want them to deviate from, you pretty much have to accept that you are railroading them. Either don't do it, or come to terms with what you're doing.

Well, the "enemy team" idea was just an exampleI haven't worked out the general progression just yet, so I'll probably be able to better explain what I mean then, but my idea is to put in a series of subtle "fail-safes" I can use if something goes wrong and the players are lost for whatever reason. Like, "railroding" implies constraining something to one direction if they try to go somewhere else, whereas this would be more like giving myself ways to nudge them in a certain direction I believe will help progress the plot if they don't find a direction on their own first. Like really passive GPS, I suppose. You can drive wherever you want, but I'll always know where to direct you if you're not getting anywhere.

I would be more likely to work the OTHER way: have your adventure, with a minimum number of encounters - 3 or 4, whatever you think is the fewest you can use to make an adventure work. Then have 2-3 extra encounters or puzzles or traps or whatnot (an interesting NPC?) to insert, if they have made it farther, faster than you expected. In other words, if you have 3 hours to play, and you have 3 scenes or encounters planned, and after the first hour, they've finished scene 2, and you realize you're probably going to finish before your alloted timespan is up, then drop in the puzzle you had prepped but not required for the door into the final lair... or toss in an extra combat with a wandering orc guard who just happens to be passing by at the last moment. That way, if they are dragging and lollygagging around, you can omit that encounter and speed them on their way. NEVER be afraid, in a one-shot, to say "and then, after an hour of (whatever), you reach...(the final destination)". Just the same way you STARTED in the middle of the action, with a one-shot, sometimes it is necessary to condense things that, in a campaign, would be valuable side- or back-story.

This is probably closer to what I was trying to say. The idea is to have some things like these prepared, and then a few things like these only I'd put them in various points in the middle that help add to the momentum of the plot if it feels like it's slowing down.

 

[cmad1977]

I would do two things for a successful one-shot.
1:aim for the head
2: pull trigger