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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 5344550" data-attributes="member: 1210">A couple of suggestions- first, for something like this, you almost have to make it very linear. Second, in 3 hours you're unlikely to fit more than 5 encounters with a very experienced group. With newbies, you're looking at more like 3 encounters max. Design with this in mind, and make 2 of the encounters optional.While you can do a simple site-based linear adventure, I'd say you are better off if you can offer up more than a couple rooms in a dungeon. I'd start with an encounter that offers up combat, interesting terrain options and some roleplaying- maybe the pcs come upon a group of kobolds attacking a group of wagons, so the characters can fight them and then talk to the merchant and his guards. This lets them roleplay a little, and the merchant can point to the next encounter (maybe "help guard us until we reach town" or "track the kobolds back to their lair and retrieve the chest they stole from me").I'd try to make it so that if the first fight and the roleplaying take all three hours, it's easy to adjust it so it feels like the pcs completed an adventure. In other words, if the merchant asks for them to guard the wagons and you run out of time, it's easy to say, "You make it to town".I would try to make it so that you can drop any of the remaining encounters for time, but a quick group doesn't run out of stuff to do.Another really important element of a one-shot with a short time limit is to provide pregens. It can apparently take six hours for newbies to make pcs in 4e (so I'm told); that's twice as much time as you have. Even if they are very quick and everyone is able to generate a pc in half an hour, that's 1/6 your time. Forget it- just make a good selection in advance and let them pick which ones to play.In 4e, 1st level is perfect for this. I have always felt like the "first level experience" is one that new gamers shouldn't miss out on, and 4e makes it so that 1st level pcs actually have a reasonable number of options and a few hit points.Take the Village of Hommlet approach- you start off by telling the pcs that they are a group of relatively well-equipped people looking for adventure together. In a three-hour intro-to-the-game one-shot, backstory just eats up time. Why bother with it, especially since these guys aren't going to ever play the same characters again? OTOH, if you really want to worry about it, as long as you make pregens you can just write a quick paragraph explaining that pc A is old friends with pc B, pcs B and C went to school together, pc D recruited pc E (who is pc A's brother) for the mission, etc.</blockquote>

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