"1-shot" Games

[Lonely Tylenol]

For one-shots, I like games that seem to be designed to end quickly.
CoC has already been mentioned, and it's always a good choice.
I dig X-Crawl as a player or GM for the same reason. :If you die, you DIE.
Year of the Zombie is likely to be my next one shot. I probably will run the Independance Day Massacre for it.

Another tactic that I've had good luck with is picking a movie that's familiar to players, and has some "buzz" around it, and then completely steal the plot for your game.

I ran a D&D 3.5 game based on the Matrix, where the adventureres were on the run from the mind flayers that wanted to use their brains as a power supply.
I ran a great Changeling the Dreaming one shot based on the musical "Guys & Dolls."
I'm kicking around an idea for a one shot d20 modern game based on the movie "Dog Soldiers."

A friend of mine once ran a game of his FUDGE-derived system that was loosely based on the plot of Half-Life. In the end it turned out to be a computer-generated training mission and I turned out to be an artificial personality. Which was funny, because my dice were hot that night, and I ended up wasting the opposing forces like I was some kind of ninja or something. When it turned out that I was a bot, it made that seem really amusing, as though I were the uber-DMPC that was there to kill everyone and get the PCs out alive.

 

[scourger]

Gamma World - the d20 version that was printed in Polyhedron some time back

Speaking of which, has anyone played any of the mini games from Polyhedron?

Yeah, I ran an awesome mini-campaign of Omega World--the d20 Gamma World adaptation in the Polyhedron side of Dungeon #94 (mislabeled #92 on the spine) using the Alternity Gamma World setting & adventures (converted). It is a great game. I bought a copy in addition to my subscription copy plus one to give to a friend. He bought another one and ran it a few times. I really wish he would reprise that game. It's one of the few d20 games I remain interestied in running or playing--perhaps the only one. It's really brilliant. It gets done in about 40 pages what other books fail to do in several hundred. It's a steal at $10 for a back issue:

http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/issues/2002/94

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Oh easy - round robin d20. Great fun. Totally adlibed D&D.

How does that work?

 

[jdrakeh]

If you were going to play a pick-up game, what would you want to run as a GM? What would you want to play in as a player?

Risus Fantasy on The Isle of Dread. The great thing is that, with Risus, you can run this as a straight-fantasy adventure, a 'lost world' Victorian Age adventure, a lost planet sci-fi adventure or a bunch of other things - and all it takes is about 30 seconds worth of tweaking to shift from concept to concept. This has, incidentally, been my Emergency Game Kit since late 1998 or so. It has served me well.

 

[Sledge]

Mechamorphosis d20!
Let the players destroy all of their characters in a reenactment of a G1 Transformers episode.

 

[Bagpuss]

As a player I'ld want a Pregen Character given to me with more than just a set of stats.

I'ld like a brief character history (no more than a paragraph), personality, and how I view the other members of the party. Should all fit on one page of A4. The should be some suggested quirks to make the character destinctive. The character should some how be tied into the plot.

No point playing a stale set of stats for 4 hours.

The RPGA use to produce adventures like this in the good old days now all it does is the Living Campaign stuff and advertise WotC products. There's pretty much nothing they do for pick-up players.

 

[Rel]

Risus is great for one-shots. Character creation takes about 5 minutes, if that, and no one needs to read any rules. About all you need to play is 4d6 and a notepad.

Agreed. This is what I'm using at the next NC Game Day for my Misfit Superheroes game (think Mystery Men).

Historically I've always run d20 games at the Game Days. Mostly Orcz! (lots of goofy violence from the orcish point of view) or Sky Galleons of Mars (Victorian Space Pulp). One aspect of those games that I've enjoyed is that they are one-shots but I have had a number of players return each time to reprise their roles. This gives them a certain continuity similar to what you'd have in a typical campaign.

 

[philreed]

What the industry needs is more games designed as one-shots, rather than adapting regular games into one-shots. We need games that you just play once.

Well, that's pretty much exactly what vs. Monsters is for.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

Star Frontiers is still one of my group's favorite "one shots". Character gen is easy. Cthulhu (1st Ed.) is our other favorite.

 

[Rel]

Star Frontiers is still one of my group's favorite "one shots". Character gen is easy. Cthulhu (1st Ed.) is our other favorite.

Tom I feel compelled to inform you that the image of the book in your .sig leaves me conflicted. It certainly grabs my attention but it leaves me thinking of things other than gaming.

Just sayin.