How would you design one page adventures?
toucanbuzz
No rule is inviolate
For design, I like the "sticky notes around a map" layout. Also, does the back of the page count? If so, a PC map, NPC sketch, or something similarly applicable could fit there.
For concept, however, I'll start with what not to do (or what's hard to overcome), based largely off my experience playing the AD&D product Treasure Tales, which had 1 page for player setup and 1 page for DMs, and the (really bad) Wonders of Lanhkmar (usually 2 pages), both a foray into brevity back in the day. I had to use a lot of imagination to fit these into our ongoing campaign, and few were memorable.
I also took a look at Sage Advice's link to people's homebrewed 1-page adventures, which almost all use the format of sticky notes or text blocks imposed over a 3-D map in the center.
1. It all rises or falls on your primary story idea. You don't have room to embellish and explain.
2. Brief adventures need to spark something in the imagination, not simply be a dungeon map. That's the main issue with the 1-page adventures linked above. Almost all of them are simply an abbreviated dungeon map. There's no "spark."
3. You need a twist more than you need a map.
So let's take the brief adventure "Whazzat in Der Swamp" from Wonders. Merchant keeps getting attacked by crocodiles and hires party to guard him. Yep, in the swamp there's a dozen giant crocodiles that attack. Once you kill them, he pays you and it's over. Worst adventure idea ever. Yet, it's the concept put forth in most of the 1-page dungeons. Here's a dungeon, a monster or two, and a trap. You get treasure. The end.
Not all were beyond hope. One involved a Paladin who doesn't know he's guarding an evil artifact. The party is hired to convince him to abandon his post after he's given his oath. So we have a twist, the antagonist is a good guy. Another involved being hired to protect a house safe of valuables for one night against a robbery, allowing the party to setup traps. The encounters were the different tricks the rogues would use to get in, including paying a wizard to sneak one into the safe during other distractions. The entire encounter was text, no map of the house (just the primary room was described, leaving the DM to fill in the rest). But it's Home Alone, which isn't something we get to do often in D&D. That's a spark, allowing players to flex mental muscles in coming up with ways to thwart thieves.
Using this concept:
Richy Rich, designed for 4 players, level 4 (we can have a 2-story house floor plan, and the sticky note concept lets us put text anywhere we need)
Synopsis: Gotta have a brief setup, the core concept that makes us think "cool." So let's say the merchant Richy Rich is planning on leaving the city tomorrow and has withdrawn all his assets to his rental house in the city. His personal guards are to arrive on the morrow. He doesn't pay bribes to the local thieves guild and has just gotten word the guild plans on relieving him of his wealth during the night, before his guards can arrive. The city guard has been bribed and he's got no one to turn to. On short notice, he needs someone to thwart the robbery and sends his manservant Bob to the party. We also have our "spark," the aforementioned Home Alone which allows us to set booby traps instead of the normal dungeon crawls.
Hooks: There's not much point if it's there's no impetus. Someone should already know Bob or Richy Rich, and a reward should be discussed here. Anything special should be included, like Bob having 50gp for the party to spend on supplies before night. We can probably fit this into the Synopsis if space is an issue.
The House: This is our map. We can sketch it, use free maps, whatever works. Ideally, players can get a copy since it's a defense adventure. If we're dealing with 1 page, maybe you print the house on the back? You really only need your notes of the thief attacks. Don't fill in special things like the crawlspace under the house unless the players ask. This is where you can't put in cosmetics like a DC15 Perception to notice a creak in the floor indicating a hollow crawlspace likely below. We should discuss important features like lighting and have the surrounding streets in mind. We will put the locked safe on the ground floor. You can't account for all things players might ask (e.g. how do the windows open), but we might include it in the "attack" notes if they become relevant for reference.
Setup These are the "sticky notes" we see in the one-page dungeon design around the map. In this, we want a pool of our monsters, no stat blocks, from our MM (and maybe, maybe, other source books). I have absolutely no sense of balance in this, but we can say the DM has a pool of 16 bandits, 4 thugs, 2 scouts, a priest, led by a Bandit Captain.
Attack #1: At 11pm, the rogues send a wave of 4 human bandits and 1 half-elf thug to break open ground level windows/boards, covering one another with crossbows. Another identical wave uses a Portable Battering Ram on the door. They will persist in this way until losing 4 troops, at which point they regroup.
Attack #2: We'll give the party time to rest, but not yet. Around 1130pm, the guild fires bolts at the ground level (not aiming to hit anything and from awkward angles from surrounding buildings). This is meant to draw the party away from the team of 4 Halfling bandits that is sneaking in the crawlspace below to saw a hole under the pedestal. (our notes say the crawlspace is 4' high, giving disadvantage to any medium characters seeking to attack down here and, DM discretion, making certain weapons impossible to swing.)
We need the attacks to be special, so for Attack #4, the rogues might have contracted a wizard to cast a spell (invisibility or the like) to sneak in an Elf scout whose job it is to disable any traps or obstacles (+4 Disable).
In the end, maybe there's a bonus that advances the campaign, like the merchant tells all his friends or gives them a map or so on. Let's leave the door open for more than just loot.
For concept, however, I'll start with what not to do (or what's hard to overcome), based largely off my experience playing the AD&D product Treasure Tales, which had 1 page for player setup and 1 page for DMs, and the (really bad) Wonders of Lanhkmar (usually 2 pages), both a foray into brevity back in the day. I had to use a lot of imagination to fit these into our ongoing campaign, and few were memorable.
I also took a look at Sage Advice's link to people's homebrewed 1-page adventures, which almost all use the format of sticky notes or text blocks imposed over a 3-D map in the center.
1. It all rises or falls on your primary story idea. You don't have room to embellish and explain.
2. Brief adventures need to spark something in the imagination, not simply be a dungeon map. That's the main issue with the 1-page adventures linked above. Almost all of them are simply an abbreviated dungeon map. There's no "spark."
3. You need a twist more than you need a map.
So let's take the brief adventure "Whazzat in Der Swamp" from Wonders. Merchant keeps getting attacked by crocodiles and hires party to guard him. Yep, in the swamp there's a dozen giant crocodiles that attack. Once you kill them, he pays you and it's over. Worst adventure idea ever. Yet, it's the concept put forth in most of the 1-page dungeons. Here's a dungeon, a monster or two, and a trap. You get treasure. The end.
Not all were beyond hope. One involved a Paladin who doesn't know he's guarding an evil artifact. The party is hired to convince him to abandon his post after he's given his oath. So we have a twist, the antagonist is a good guy. Another involved being hired to protect a house safe of valuables for one night against a robbery, allowing the party to setup traps. The encounters were the different tricks the rogues would use to get in, including paying a wizard to sneak one into the safe during other distractions. The entire encounter was text, no map of the house (just the primary room was described, leaving the DM to fill in the rest). But it's Home Alone, which isn't something we get to do often in D&D. That's a spark, allowing players to flex mental muscles in coming up with ways to thwart thieves.
Using this concept:
Richy Rich, designed for 4 players, level 4 (we can have a 2-story house floor plan, and the sticky note concept lets us put text anywhere we need)
Synopsis: Gotta have a brief setup, the core concept that makes us think "cool." So let's say the merchant Richy Rich is planning on leaving the city tomorrow and has withdrawn all his assets to his rental house in the city. His personal guards are to arrive on the morrow. He doesn't pay bribes to the local thieves guild and has just gotten word the guild plans on relieving him of his wealth during the night, before his guards can arrive. The city guard has been bribed and he's got no one to turn to. On short notice, he needs someone to thwart the robbery and sends his manservant Bob to the party. We also have our "spark," the aforementioned Home Alone which allows us to set booby traps instead of the normal dungeon crawls.
Hooks: There's not much point if it's there's no impetus. Someone should already know Bob or Richy Rich, and a reward should be discussed here. Anything special should be included, like Bob having 50gp for the party to spend on supplies before night. We can probably fit this into the Synopsis if space is an issue.
The House: This is our map. We can sketch it, use free maps, whatever works. Ideally, players can get a copy since it's a defense adventure. If we're dealing with 1 page, maybe you print the house on the back? You really only need your notes of the thief attacks. Don't fill in special things like the crawlspace under the house unless the players ask. This is where you can't put in cosmetics like a DC15 Perception to notice a creak in the floor indicating a hollow crawlspace likely below. We should discuss important features like lighting and have the surrounding streets in mind. We will put the locked safe on the ground floor. You can't account for all things players might ask (e.g. how do the windows open), but we might include it in the "attack" notes if they become relevant for reference.
Setup These are the "sticky notes" we see in the one-page dungeon design around the map. In this, we want a pool of our monsters, no stat blocks, from our MM (and maybe, maybe, other source books). I have absolutely no sense of balance in this, but we can say the DM has a pool of 16 bandits, 4 thugs, 2 scouts, a priest, led by a Bandit Captain.
Attack #1: At 11pm, the rogues send a wave of 4 human bandits and 1 half-elf thug to break open ground level windows/boards, covering one another with crossbows. Another identical wave uses a Portable Battering Ram on the door. They will persist in this way until losing 4 troops, at which point they regroup.
Attack #2: We'll give the party time to rest, but not yet. Around 1130pm, the guild fires bolts at the ground level (not aiming to hit anything and from awkward angles from surrounding buildings). This is meant to draw the party away from the team of 4 Halfling bandits that is sneaking in the crawlspace below to saw a hole under the pedestal. (our notes say the crawlspace is 4' high, giving disadvantage to any medium characters seeking to attack down here and, DM discretion, making certain weapons impossible to swing.)
We need the attacks to be special, so for Attack #4, the rogues might have contracted a wizard to cast a spell (invisibility or the like) to sneak in an Elf scout whose job it is to disable any traps or obstacles (+4 Disable).
In the end, maybe there's a bonus that advances the campaign, like the merchant tells all his friends or gives them a map or so on. Let's leave the door open for more than just loot.
Sacrosanct
Legend
I think it really depends on what you have in mind as the type of adventure. I've created 1 page adventures myself, and let's assume keeping it to one A4 page is a requirement (in reference to many of the comments above). In all cases, stat blocks are avoided because space is so critical, unless absolutely necessary. As a general rule, anything that can be referenced in a core book, don't include it. Use your space to flesh out the adventure and add flavor as much as possible because you've only got 1 page to work with.
Do I want a more story driven adventure? Then I would do something like this (background/plot hook in the upper right, and then every other area is an "encounter" area)
For more of a traditional type adventure, I'd do it like this
Do I want a more story driven adventure? Then I would do something like this (background/plot hook in the upper right, and then every other area is an "encounter" area)
For more of a traditional type adventure, I'd do it like this
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Sacrosanct
Legend
I don't think anyone is assuming they must be, but it really depends on what adventure you're creating, and in most cases, you really do kinda need a map of where the adventure takes place to give a good idea.
Hussar
Legend
But... but... but... maps are COOL. 
The nice thing about using a map+text is that you can cram a LOT of information into a visual representation. I've always thought that most modules under use their maps quite honestly. Why don't adventure maps put the contents of each area right on the map? Add in a couple of more maps to represent movement and you can create a very dynamic adventure without walls of text. You don't need boxed text describing the room when you can actually just visually represent the room on the map - what's the furniture? What does the room look like? that sort of thing.
Given the quality of graphics available, it's really not as necessary anymore to have all the information in text.
The nice thing about using a map+text is that you can cram a LOT of information into a visual representation. I've always thought that most modules under use their maps quite honestly. Why don't adventure maps put the contents of each area right on the map? Add in a couple of more maps to represent movement and you can create a very dynamic adventure without walls of text. You don't need boxed text describing the room when you can actually just visually represent the room on the map - what's the furniture? What does the room look like? that sort of thing.
Given the quality of graphics available, it's really not as necessary anymore to have all the information in text.
So I whipped this together super-quick just as a sort of concept piece. I think it can be improved. I took Paul Oklesh's adventure for EN5ider and tried to distill the most important parts of it down to one page. It's an 11-page adventure, so this is basically the very core of it. My layout skills are mediocre at best.
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[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION], that’s good and certainly runnable as is.
If we think about this in terms of the pillars then the best format is determined by whether exploration or social interaction is the leading pillar (combat always being involved in some form or other).
Your distillation is perfectly good for a social interaction driven adventure. Some NPC has upset the general order and the PCs have to put things right. The were-rat adventure described earlier would also fall into this category.
For an exploration driven adventure, such as a dungeon, castle, cave system, a map has to lead the way and then the interesting locations within the structure are called out in labels around the map. Here treasure is commonly the motivator.
Just choose the right format for your 1-page adventure and you’re set.
If we think about this in terms of the pillars then the best format is determined by whether exploration or social interaction is the leading pillar (combat always being involved in some form or other).
Your distillation is perfectly good for a social interaction driven adventure. Some NPC has upset the general order and the PCs have to put things right. The were-rat adventure described earlier would also fall into this category.
For an exploration driven adventure, such as a dungeon, castle, cave system, a map has to lead the way and then the interesting locations within the structure are called out in labels around the map. Here treasure is commonly the motivator.
Just choose the right format for your 1-page adventure and you’re set.
Wiseblood
Adventurer
I did this for one of the best sessions I’ve ever ran (run?). It was for experienced tabletop players that wanted to try 5e. I wanted to showcase the system. So I picked a handful of subsystems that I wanted to highlight based on the character classes present. (Rest, combat, skills and so on) I took a bit more narrative control to put everyone on the same page and skip introduction.
I started them off with combat. An encounter to get them familiar with the “new” rules. It was also an encounter designed to be safe and easy for them to survive. Stakes being the life of an npc. I made sure there were tactical elements that could be exploited by the players and an.... algorithm(?) for the enemy behavior.
I put 3-5 clues in that encounter and it’s aftermath that would give them a direction to head in (it tied in to their immediate goals so not a diversion) and information that would make more sense later. It was meant to be a cupcake encounter. Confidence builder.
(Short rest here but not really necessary)
Next encounter was exploring and investigation with role play. Again I assembled clues so that the players would see two obvious choices.
Third encounter was role play and combat where players interacted with the bad guy’s lieutenant and learned the stakes and the scope of what was going on. This one was designed to be tougher there were two types of combatants here minionized guys and the lieutenant. Lieutenant was more interesting and had more options. Minions had an abbreviated stat block.
(Short rest here)
Fourth encounter was preceded by a decision from players on what needed to happen to prevent nastiness alluded to in encounter three. Combat took place here and while not being extremely dangerous to the players their decisions made a difference. It also taxed their resources.
(Long rest) and showdown or not. I informed the players what was going to happen if they didn’t intervene. They chose heroics. The long rest was needed to be at top fighting shape. It also raised the stakes because time was important. They headed off to the finale. Exploited the terrain and situation and snuffed out the bad guy and his minions.
I wrote it like bullet points. I wrote the stat blocks with an eye towards making the opposition varied and still not overly complicated to run.
I didn’t hold back information behind a “DC check”. No roadblocks, no gotcha moments and no red herrings.
I kept it vague here to show it’s skeleton on how I would do it. The specifics might muddy the water here.
I started them off with combat. An encounter to get them familiar with the “new” rules. It was also an encounter designed to be safe and easy for them to survive. Stakes being the life of an npc. I made sure there were tactical elements that could be exploited by the players and an.... algorithm(?) for the enemy behavior.
I put 3-5 clues in that encounter and it’s aftermath that would give them a direction to head in (it tied in to their immediate goals so not a diversion) and information that would make more sense later. It was meant to be a cupcake encounter. Confidence builder.
(Short rest here but not really necessary)
Next encounter was exploring and investigation with role play. Again I assembled clues so that the players would see two obvious choices.
Third encounter was role play and combat where players interacted with the bad guy’s lieutenant and learned the stakes and the scope of what was going on. This one was designed to be tougher there were two types of combatants here minionized guys and the lieutenant. Lieutenant was more interesting and had more options. Minions had an abbreviated stat block.
(Short rest here)
Fourth encounter was preceded by a decision from players on what needed to happen to prevent nastiness alluded to in encounter three. Combat took place here and while not being extremely dangerous to the players their decisions made a difference. It also taxed their resources.
(Long rest) and showdown or not. I informed the players what was going to happen if they didn’t intervene. They chose heroics. The long rest was needed to be at top fighting shape. It also raised the stakes because time was important. They headed off to the finale. Exploited the terrain and situation and snuffed out the bad guy and his minions.
I wrote it like bullet points. I wrote the stat blocks with an eye towards making the opposition varied and still not overly complicated to run.
I didn’t hold back information behind a “DC check”. No roadblocks, no gotcha moments and no red herrings.
I kept it vague here to show it’s skeleton on how I would do it. The specifics might muddy the water here.
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