How would you design one page adventures?

I'm still stuck if you need it to be a single page. I find that I need to print off a copy to play and if I need to make a few more pages of fill in the blanks or stat blocks, I just find that is more work for me to do in prep phase. I would rather print out several pages that are complete than have one page with holes in it that I need to do work over and still print out.

What I would like on a single page are traps and puzzles. A room with a good puzzle or trap within the adventure would be great. This is something that takes a lot of time for me to prep.

Morrus said:

What would you want to see in such a thing?

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0. Adventure/Session Name
1. Setting the Scene - a brief description, key notes/NPCs
2. The Event - introduces the conflict/quest - could be a singular or combination of the pillars.
3. Interesting Features - terrain/weather conditions, monsters, DCs...etc
4. Small Map (only if necessary)
5. Conclusion

Adventure Name: We're the Rats

Setting the Scene
[Name] Two-story tavern. Mid-late evening. Bitterly cold winter's day. Handful of warmly dressed patrons. Dim light. Roaring fire. Staple diet is ale, hot soup and bread.
[Name] NPC and singular word descriptors. Innkeeper's dog. Social encounter which provides leads for characters' goals. Perhaps PCs notice girl.

The Event
A gust of wind bursts into the tavern, disturbing the common room as 3 shifty looking characters enter. The innkeeper's dog barks nervously at the strangers. The central figure, a scrawny man with a wickedly long nose and beady eyes sniffs the air in front of him and eyes out the crowd...searchingly. "She's here!" he cries out to his friends. They in turn, without missing a beat quickly bar the doors behind them. The innkeeper rushes out from the kitchen to witness what the rest of the tavern's patrons are seeing - the three individuals suddenly seem to undergo a violent and painful transformation....etc
long story short - wererats, slaughtering all within, attempting to reach to a young thin girl whose making her way to the top floor.

Interesting Features
Dim light except near the fire and on the second floor. Cover exists from tables and bar counter. Improvised weapons (chairs, glasses/mugs, plate of scalding soup, hot poker). Innkeeper locks kitchen door, grabs a hidden shortword behind the counter. Treat innkeeper's dog as ally. Wererats make for a straight line, leaping over/on tables, counters, climbing the banister...until a threat/obstacle presents itself.

Conclusion
If the wererats manage to corner the girl they attempt to grapple/pin her. In the attempt she changes into a wererat herself.
DM provides reason for her relationship with wererats. Perhaps opening up the possibility for further adventure.
Possible question - Why did the innkeeper's dog not initially bark at /suspect the wererat girl? Provide reasons. Investigation, Nature checks.

EDIT: The adventure is open-ended, PCs could save the girl and question her why 3 wererats were after her. Should they discover her secret they could kill her themselves or not. Have her arrested, which is what the innkeeper would (at minimum) prefer.

I'd forgo a lot of what typically makes for an even abbreviated D&D adventure and go much heavier on the inspiration and way lighter on the stats and numbers.

Situation: For the last few months, the city of Vale has had a growing problem. A handful of annoying misplaced items became a handful of noticeable thefts, which have now graduated into a rash of complicated, unsolvable burglaries. Your group, either hired by a local art dealer, pressured by the local thieves' guild, or maybe even out of the kindness of your own hearts, have figured out that the thieves are nothing more than a bunch of what would at first glance appear to be normal, albeit treasure laden rats. You pursue the foul vermin into the sewers.

Complications: Your group is lost in the sewers and something just ate the cleric.

The surviving members of your party are fighters, rangers, or rogues.

The rats are indeed normal rats, but they are being compelled to skulk about in the town above by a psychic otyugh who previously ate a rogue and a druid and who somehow absorbed their personalities and class levels.

The otyugh is now getting the idea that what it REALLY wants to do is lure more adventurers down here and pick em off one by one so that it can eat their super cool class levels too.

Inspiration: Cool psychic otyugh artwork, a picture of a rat swarm making off with a fancy silver set, maybe a simple flowchart of decision based exploration instead of a map.

@Sadras I’d call that an encounter rather than adventure. For these kind of things you’ve really got to empower the DM to fill in the blanks rather than provide the full details. So for your Wererat adventure you should provide the motivation and situation for the were-rat girl. And let the DM fill in the blanks. So I’d say:

The girl has fallen in love with the son of the inn-keeper and taken a position there despite really being betrothed to the son of the chief of the were-rat tribe nearby. A search party has been hunting for her and tracks her down to the inn. If the PCs choose to intervene then adventure is helping her to resolve her conflict.

I don’t think it needs much more than that. Names and relationships of the primary NPCs, some ancillary monster references (some guardians to the lair, perhaps some mutant “boss rat”, the location (and numbers) of the were-rat lair etc, etc). As noted above, go for more theater of mind.

It’s more A-Team adventure of the week stuff...

@Morrus I imagine you’ve seen this?

Eureka: 501 Adventure Plots to Inspire Game Masters, EGP42001 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0615321860/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_U51.BbHA9A5PW

While I found it disappointing because the adventures were too vague/big, I think that something similar (but more tightly focused) would be good.

I used to prep adventures this way. (I didn't strictly limit myself to 1 page, but the amount of stuff I wrote basically amounted to 1 page or so.) This was for a spy campaign so every session had a very clear mission, but it was very unclear how to achieve the mission -- kind of a single-session "sandbox." Here was the stuff I found useful to prep:

1. Goal: What are the PCs trying to achieve? It's really important, in a one-shot, to get down to business and not dither about what the party should be doing. Make it super obvious what the end-goal of the PCs is, but not obvious how they will achieve it.

2. Background Information: Information about the situation which the PCs may discover. They may discover some of it ahead of time via research, or they might discover the information during the adventure, or they might not discover it at all. Information that the PCs can't discover might as well not exist. (Note, I never list HOW the PCs can discover this information; there may be many ways to discover each particular clue.)

3. NPCs: Who might the PCs meet? Some NPCs might be static, just waiting for the PCs to show up, but some might be taking action (see Developments). Only NPCs with discernible personalities count; otherwise, they count as Elements/Obstacles (no agency) or Developments (agency, but no discernible personality). Just like with Background Information -- if the PCs can't meet the NPC, they might as well not exist.

4. Elements/Obstacles: Areas, items, and other phenomena that the PCs might inspect, utilize, get damaged by, or otherwise interact with. These elements are largely static, as opposed to...

5. Developments: Events that might occur, which are not deliberately precipitated by the PCs (although some developments might be a response to PC actions). This may be NPCs taking action, or responding to PC actions, or it could be natural or artificial phenomena that changes over time, like the weather, or a trap that affects the whole dungeon (like it starts filling up with poison gas).

Well, there's a boatload of examples at the One Page Dungeon Contest:



This was last year's winner.

I can't tell if just referencing the Orc stat block in the basic rules is against the spirit of the restrictions or not. If this was a electronic document, I would hyperlink everything anyway.
But for the sake of experimentation, I am going to assume "no" and try to truncate the stat block as much as possible, because just formatting is a space hog. Even if the answer is yes, you would still have to do it for anything unique.

Orc. M humanoid (orc), CE. Challenge 1/2(100 xp). Speed 30'.
AC: 13, HP: 15(2hd), STR +3, DEX +1, CON +3, INT -2, WIS 0, CHA 0.
Darkvision 60', Passive Perception 10. Intimidation +2. Speaks Common, Orc.
Bonus Action: Aggressive. Move up to speed toward an enemy it can see.
Actions: Greataxe: Single target melee weapon, 5'. +5 to hit, 9(1d12+3) slashing damage.
Javelin: Single target melee/ranged weapon, 5', 30/120'. +5 to hit, 6 (1d6+3) piercing damage.

Dang, not as much space saved as I had hoped.

If I just want to do short adventure I'll always start it with "You're in an adventurer guild and have been tasked to kill rats in a cellar". Then I spin some ideas around that. Like the quest giver actually being evil and luring our adventurers into a trap. Or I really make a pure dungeon BUT I have inhabitants that actually talk with you added so it is not just finding a key and opening a door.

The Campaign Date/Actual Date (good for reference)

A super brief summary of what is going on and how it might connect to any campaign-encompassing metaplot. (Likely copied from last session’s sheet with some minor updates.)

A list of the currently pertinent NPCs

In order, ask the following questions about the session’s major villain (in my head I’m always saying, “Answer me these questions three” when I do this):
1) What does the villain want?
2) What does the villain know?
3) What does the villain’s current plan?

Main villain statblock (even if you don’t think that encounter is bound to happen during the session, players always surprise, so don’t get caught with your pants down).*

1 to 3 small encounters that I can drop in around the area the PCs are in.

Some small parcels of treasure.

A small collection of NPC names (structure in a sentence as opposed to a list to save space, male and female).

At least 2 tavern names (this inevitably comes up).

Pick 1 PC and design one small interaction that speaks to the character’s motivation, background, or any special interests they have. Cycle through the PCs each session.

* A major campaign villain probably deserves their own document and can be carried through from session to session. You could update questions #2 and #3 above on that sheet to keep track of things.

Leatherhead said:

I can't tell if just referencing the Orc stat block in the basic rules is against the spirit of the restrictions or not. If this was a electronic document, I would hyperlink everything anyway.
But for the sake of experimentation, I am going to assume "no" and try to truncate the stat block as much as possible, because just formatting is a space hog. Even if the answer is yes, you would still have to do it for anything unique.

Orc. M humanoid (orc), CE. Challenge 1/2(100 xp). Speed 30'.
AC: 13, HP: 15(2hd), STR +3, DEX +1, CON +3, INT -2, WIS 0, CHA 0.
Darkvision 60', Passive Perception 10. Intimidation +2. Speaks Common, Orc.
Bonus Action: Aggressive. Move up to speed toward an enemy it can see.
Actions: Greataxe: Single target melee weapon, 5'. +5 to hit, 9(1d12+3) slashing damage.
Javelin: Single target melee/ranged weapon, 5', 30/120'. +5 to hit, 6 (1d6+3) piercing damage.

Dang, not as much space saved as I had hoped.

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AAW Games Mini-Dungeon Tome uses symbols with a key to eliminate the repeated words from one stat block or trap to the next (STR, DEX, Attack, etc.). It gets a stat block down to two or three lines.The other thing they have going for them is that they can reuse a stat block between several adventures in the book. I think that including by reference would be the way to go though.