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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9585042" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/3clddZo.jpeg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 568px" /><a href="https://rollandplaypress.com/products/one-shot-wonders" target="_blank">Official store page.</a>While the most popular 5e adventures are longer campaigns, a significant amount of gaming groups cannot commit to such lengthy endeavors. Be it testing the waters with new players, giving people the opportunity to try out alternate PC builds, or just a short change of pace, one-shot adventures are popular due to requiring little investment. However, even shorter products rarely advertise themselves as being one-shots, much less offering over a hundred such modules ranging across all levels of play.One Shot Wonders is the first major sourcebook of Roll and Play Press, a company that specializes in physical aids for tabletop games. Beyond just a collection of quick adventures, the product is optimized for ease of use in actual play. First off, every NPC and monster detailed in this book uses stats that are freely available in the 5th Edition Basic Rules. Second off, each one-shot comfortably fits within 1-2 pages, and applies clever use of formatting to convey relevant information in the minimal amount of space. Here’s one such adventure, Hostage Hoax, as an example:<img src="https://i.imgur.com/fIDSbpP.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 789px" />Here’s a two-page adventure that’s a bit more detailed, Fight At the Museum:<img src="https://i.imgur.com/R6X9MmX.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />(the black bar is censoring my email address, it’s not a graphics error).Both one-shots include the general overview, boxed text to start the adventure, brief write-ups and parenthetical stat blocks for NPCs, a suggested progression of events, locations and clues to forward the plot, and the sample level range along with modifications for different levels of play. Additionally, the text boxes for different information, such as Quick Stats, Suggested Stories, and level range all use different formats and colors to make them easily pop out in the reader’s eyes. There are no widowed or orphaned lines of text, either, and the book comes with two PDFs, one in a single-page format and another in a two page side-by-side spread format. Which makes it all the more surprising that neither PDF has bookmarks, which makes navigation a bit more difficult. Otherwise, that’s my only criticism formatting-wise for One-Shot Wonders.The book begins with an Introduction from one of the authors as to their primary rationale for creating the book: to serve as a third option besides lengthy pre-written adventures and the additional time and effort from homebrewing everything. The followup pages go over the standard formatting and key info points that the book uses, along with a one-page What To Play selection of particular adventures united by strong themes, such as roleplay-heavy scenarios or ones set entirely within a dungeon.Each chapter of One-Shot Wonders has 17 adventures sharing a common type of terrain or region, ordered by increasing levels of experience to a maximum of 8 to 9th level. Six of the adventures are more vague hooks than complete encounters and scenarios, with 3 of those ones fitting on a page, and one of the “full” one-shots includes a map with keyed rooms. The exceptions are the last two chapters, with Legendary Adventures focusing on high-level play, and Running Your Game connects all the adventures in this book as part of a single setting along with miscellaneous DMing tips. Chapters 5 and 6, Down Underground and Around Town, have two map-based adventures each. I will not be covering every adventure here for reasons of brevity, instead highlighting the more novel and interesting ones.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/driz6Z1.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 341px" /> Chapter 1: Out in the ColdThis first chapter quite predictably covers adventures set in wintry and arctic locations. Our opening adventure, The Cat’s Mother, involves the PCs escorting a halfling conservationist to watch over some endangered sabre-toothed tigers who are at risk of being poached. The mapped adventure, Trial and Error, takes place in a remote research station inhabited by scientists, who due to experimental serums ended up changing into monsters. There are notes in the compound that can reveal the monsters’ weaknesses and possibly return them to normal.One of the cozier one-shots is Snow Angels, a Christmas-themed adventure where a pair of angels hires the PCs to deliver gifts to villagers in their stead, as their current duties keep them occupied in healing a sick mayor. Needless to say, delivering the gifts involves breaking into peoples’ houses, which contain personal defense traps and guard animals/constructs. In Too Deep is an investigation-based Lovecraftian scenario taking place in an isolated seaside village. Many of the townsfolk are brainwashed by an aboleth, and the various sidebars provide clues and encounters so that the PCs can piece things together. The final encounter is with the aboleth under a frozen lake, who is guarded by cultists and gibbering mouthers. The final one-shot of this chapter, Ice Trials, is a light-hearted, combat-lite festival where the PCs can take part in three contests against Erikk in a village. He is the only other contestant, whose years-long winning streak caused others to stop competing. The contests involve herding mammoths, a luge track race, and felling a tree and chopping it into as many smaller logs as possible. During the final contest, a wandering frost giant attacks the PCs and Erikk.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/BJppmMU.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="width: 412px" /> Chapter 2: On the CoastThe next chapter has us depart for sunnier, saltier pastures out by the sea. Our first adventure, Down at the Docks, involves helping a terminally unlucky gnome sailor finish a variety of tasks before her ship’s next voyage in order to avoid being kicked out of the navy. Such tasks will involve things going catastrophically wrong and require PC intervention, such as the gnome accidentally knocking over a barrel full of grey oozes while swabbing the decks. The next adventure, Wave of Destruction, involves preparing a town for defense against a plesiosaurus that has been attacking settlements up and down the coast. Minor preliminary encounters and tasks the PCs participate in can give them an easier or harder time against the final battle, such as catching enough quippers to use as bait to distract the beast. Fishy Business, whose goblin chef is Kaz Kardwall and the character on the cover of this book, has his restaurant sabotaged by a sea hag seeking to ruin his business. The adventure begins when she uses magic to polymorph anglers into octopi and giant crabs and orders them to attack patrons and break things. The follow-up encounters involve the PCs tracing the hag’s lair to a boat known as the Sandpiper, and while there discover that she was hired by a disgruntled employee seeking revenge against Kaz for putting her family’s cafe out of business.The Sunken Crown is a classic underwater treasure hunt, where a research team hires the PCs to retrieve a cursed crown last reported in the contents of a shipwreck. But the crown has already been found by a merfolk gang leader who is planning to use the treasures found within to mount a raid on a nearby underwater city. Wedding Crashers has the PCs acting in the role of peacekeepers at a wedding between two pirate captains whose ensuing political alliance has brought its share of would-be assassins and rowdy saboteurs. The final adventure, Blackout Bay, takes place in a multi-level lighthouse complete with a keyed map, where the PCs are hired to investigate the lighthouse’s projection of magical darkness which is devastating for maritime travel. The culprit is an elven vampire who feeds on sailors whose ships crash into the shoreline.Thoughts So Far: The first two chapters have a good diversity of content. You have more whimsical and silly adventures like Down at the Docks and Snow Angels, you have your monster hunts like Wave of Destruction and In Too Deep, and you have mini-dungeon crawls like Blackout Bay and Trial and Error. The only shortcomings are a relative lack of adventures involving deeper investigation and political intrigue. The ones we do get are rather simple and straightforward, but given that these kinds of adventures are much harder to fit in a 1-2 page format, much less a pick up and play oneshot, this isn’t as big a mark as it otherwise would be if other adventure types were found lacking instead.Join us next time as we explore more regional one-shots Under the Sun, Into the Woods, and Up in the Hills!</blockquote>

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