Planning a one-shot game

[der_kluge]

I've ran a few games at GenCon and other cons.

In general, PC is right. Keep it short and simple. 4 hours max - but if you're running for just friends off, the cuff, obviously it can be longer, though expect people to leave if they have other conflicts if it's too long. Night time is good for avoiding conflicts.

In general, keep the plot simple, with maybe one twist, and a few small combat encounters, and close with a big BBEG encounter, or something.

Don't try to enforce too many world-specific rules. The worst games I played in were ones where the GM placed us all in *his* world, and invariably a few of his players would play, and they would know all this background information, and you knew nothing. So, keep it generic, or play in a popular published setting, FR, or grayhawk, or something that people are at least familiar with.

I suspect most ENWorld gamers are above average, so they may very well spend the entire time just role-playing. So, if you give them a lot of really intensive role-playing opportunities to play with, you might very well find that the players run your game for you.

 

[Afrodyte]

sorry for length

I neglected to mention another selling point of pregens: you can plan around the PCs' abilities. By this I don't mean you get to hose them and railroad them until they're halfway across the continent, but you can plan for contingencies a lot better and keep things going a lot smoother than if you had no idea what people were playing.

If you want to give the players more options than what creating their characters whole-cloth would give, you can create basic stats (class, level, skills, feats, ability scores) but leave the race and other descriptive stuff up to the players. In addition, I feel it is always important to have too many pregens ready, just in case. If some players show up that you hadn't seen before, you're prepared. If not, you have more options for the players that are there. A rule of thumb I'd use is to have one character for each player, plus at least half the number of the total group. So, for a 4-member party, 6 pregens is good.

The best thing is to know your group well enough to know what types of pregens they'll gravitate to. However, if you are running a standard D&D game, chances are you'll want to stay as close to the iconic party as possible. You don't need to specifically have 1 meatshield, 1 band-aid, 1 thief, and 1 pointy hat to have your bases covered. You just need a warrior, a skill expert, and a spellcaster. For small parties, using the more versatile classes is probably best, since you can cover a few more areas without needing more characters. I love bards, rangers, and rogues because they are so versatile. Parties that need a spellcaster and a skill expert can't go wrong with a bard. Those that need a warrior and a skill expert may find a ranger invaluable. Rogues are versatile enough to be the skill expert for any party. For large parties, specialization is not such a big deal.

Of course, you don't even need to follow that pattern, depending on the nature of the game you'll be running. If you are running a low magic game or one where magic is not integral to success, you may find that you don't need many options for spellcasters, whether divine or arcane. If you are running a game of political intrigue, you won't need many options for combat-oriented classes (except for the paladin). Likewise, if you know the characters will spend lots of time in the wilderness, you'll probably want barbarians, druids, and rangers as options. For a homebrew setting with non-standard elements (especially magic), it's simple just to remove them from the available options for pre-gens rather than trying to explain a lot of rules changes and differences.

While DMing in a familiar world would save some headaches, if you are using a one-shot to playtest a homebrew, I strongly suggest that you are well-versed on information the players should know, and try to keep things simple. A rule of thumb I have is that if it can't fit on the front end of a 4 x 6 index card without microscopic writing, it's probably too complicated. Index cards are wonderful for reference (house rules, races, etc) because they're more mobile than books, so the group isn't held up by one player looking up one part.

 

[Buttercup]

Thanks for all the advice! This has given me lots to think about.

The thieves' guild idea is very interesting. Can anyone else suggest scenarios that lend themselves to single session games?

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Couple of quick one off ideas:

Party own/work for a business venture of some sort. An airship/casino was a memorable one!

An party from a church or knightly order - Plenty of room for inter party politicing. Possibly juniors - squires/initiates/etc.

A military unit on the run after a defeat.



Stolen from some other thread: (can't remember who from!)

Players are the pets of a party of kidnapped PCs - familiar, paladin mount, 'awakened' pet cat, etc. Thought that sounded like fun.

 

[buzz]

I have advice I can pass on as having been a participant, but not a designer of a one-shot: design the scenario and the pregens so that the game can start as quickly as possible.

I.e., go ahead and make the pregens easily "grokked." Eschew long background or personality info and focus on a brief, to-the-point summary. A good way to do this is with a picture; pictures can form immediate associations. E.g., if you roll up a fighter and slap a picture of, say, Russell Crowe from Gladiator on the sheet, the player (unless they haven't seen the film) will *immediately* know who that PC is. This works especially well for modern games, where you can use pics of famous actors or character actors. If you give me a d20M PC with the words "CIA department head" and a pciture of James Earl Jones on it, I already know *way* more, right then and there, than I might having to read a page of notes.

And speaking of reading, don't prep any lengthy handouts that need to be read before the start of the game. Pick a familiar setting (e.g., FR) or make it so the setting is irrelevant. Time is precious in one-shots, and almost nobody is going to be able to adequately digest and remember what was in the handouts anyway.

This all points towards the use of a lot of cliches, but, IMHO, that's a good thing. Cliches provide an immediate reaction, as well as a springboard for the players to do some fleshing out during the course of the game, which in itself is fun.