Opinions about 4e as a one-shot game?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Getting into a character - particularly a higher level one - is difficult and takes time that you might not in a one-shot. So I think it's not optimal for that purpose.

Essentially, everyone needs to understand how his own powers work and how to use them in the team. That can take one or two fights.

We usually rotate DMs and campaigns every week, and this typically means a longer "warm-up" time in the first two encounters. It's a good idea to keep those encounters simpler if in any way possible.

 

[vagabundo]

I sometimes build PCs for my more DND-challenged players. I find that you can choose powers and feats to minimise play complexity. And some classes are just more complex to run in game - or at least learn.

I usually choose feats and powers that are minimal on the text or just add static bona to the character - something CB does for you.

So for a one shot I think it would be possible to create a less-complex set of pregens that 4e players could run quite quickly.

 

[Bodhiwolff]

In my opinion, 4E is extremely good as a one-shot game. It is even good as a one-shot introductory game where people don't know the rules.

At one weekend home-based gamefest I attended, a half-dozen or more one-shot 4E style adventures went off without a hitch, covering a variety of genres and styles.

The 4E automatically-generated sheets and cards are amazing, beautiful, very cool -- and ultimately too dense to be practical.

But distilling all of this down to the stuff that actually gets *used* makes 4E into a very simple, fast-and-furious, accessible game that is extremely suitable for one-shots and learning experiences.

The advice I would give would be ...

a) pre-gen characters using the character builder.

b) get rid of the character sheet (or hand it out and immediately slide it out of sight). 90 percent of the stuff on there isn't necessary to actually play, and just gets in the way when you're looking up a value. Instead, just hand out a sheet with the following -- initiative, move speed, the 4 defenses, Hit Points, bloodied value, Healing Surge value, number of surges, skill values, special skill section for passive/active insight, perception, dungeoneering, nature, arcana (the ones which you're always checking)

c) custom-build power cards. use only finalized, pre-calculated values (so they say things like "2d8+6" instead of "2w+STR", so that all of the calculations and math are done ahead of time. Get rid of all the fluff, but *do* distill down the special rules for each power. Re-title the powers if you want to customize them for a particular style or theme (this goes a long, long way to making the game your own, I've found ... when somebody throws down with a nasty-titled power, and writes their own fluff explanation as to why it does what it does, the laughs ensue!)

d) make some extra power cards. For each player, make ... 2 encounter copies of "Healing Surge" with the calculated healing values on them and the rules for defense. 1 at-will copy of "All Out Defense" with the values for that. 1 at-will copy of "Bull Rush" with the rules for that. 1 at-will copy with the title "Do Something Cool!" with an explanation that you're supposed to just make something up -- it'll be okay! -- to remind players that their powers aren't the only option.

Armed with this distilled information and pre-calculated power cards (with extra cards to remind them of the most popular options) suddenly even a higher-level character is play-able with a minimum of advance notice.

...............

 

[ggroy]

Another way to speed through a 1-shot 4E game, is to make some of the combat and non-combat encounters into (quasi) skill challenges of some sort.

 

[Skywalker]

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of others about this.

I have 4e as a one shot for complete newbies at levels 1, 3, 5, 15 and 22. In all cases, it took only 1 fight for people to get up to speed and within 3 combats we were chugging along at 45 minutes per combat.

 

[Baz King]

I've had a fair amount of success running oneshots at varuous Cons. In fact my gaming group has a blog entirely devoted to oneshot gaming of all types. The Smart Party.

For a step by step guide try my 4e blog Treehouse: and look for the character booklets I made up. As other posters have said, they are best when stripped of all the behind the scenes number wrangling. My sheets don't even have 'level' on them (Its 5th). I made sure to pick feats and powers that don't need too much memory space from the player.

I've run about 4 con games using these guidelines, for all levels of expertise, and they all went well.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

4e can make for an AMAZING low level one shot. However, as levels go up, things get complex.

While in 3e it was the casters that got obtusely complex, in 4e, everyone gets weird for new players. And while none of them have the "Oh god what"ness of the 3x casters, higher level 4e characters of all classes can still be somewhat of a block to new players.

In other words, keep it low level, and you're golden.