D&D 5E Suggestion for one-off adventure?

[woonga]

Hi all,
I'll be heading to a cabin next weekend with about ~15 people, and about half of them are in my bi-weekly campaign. I'd like to offer up a one-off adventure over the weekend for any of them who are interested, as well as a few of our friends who've expressed interest but aren't a part of the normal campaign.

I won't have a ton of time to prep, so am looking for suggestions for a premade adventure. I plan to have a selection of pregen character sheets available. I will be poking around on DMs Guild, but would love to hear any recommendations for short one-offs that you all have particularly enjoyed. Some general guidelines below of what I am looking for, but suggestions outside of these are definitely still welcome!

• Party Size: 3-6 (I don't mind doing some CR tweaking for slightly larger groups)
• Ideal Level: Open to anywhere from 2-6
• Length: 3-4 hours

 

[ExploderWizard]

What has your group already played? I would say Lost Mines of Phandelver is really good, but not so much if the group has already played it.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yeah, Lost Mines of Phandelver is a good one, though omnipresent. Goodman Games has a whole series of slim 5e adventures that could easily fit into that timeframe.

 

[woonga]

My core group has played LMoP (though very heavily modified), but it's taken them a few months to make it through the full adventure. I'm definitely looking for something shorter and more self-contained for this game.

I'll definitely look into the Goodman Games recommendation.

It looks like the Adventurers League stuff is tuned for about the timeframe I'm looking for at a range of levels. I've never played AL though if anyone knows of specific modules there that are worth checking out.

 

[jgsugden]

What you're looking for has often been called a "Delve" - a short adventure of 3 to 6 encounters that takes a few hours to complete and stands alone. In 4E, WotC released a Dungeon Delve book that had a collection of such adventures - one per adventurer level if I recall correctly. If you find a copy of it and update the monsters to 5E, it provides some good encounter ideas. I see it at used book stores for a couple bucks all the time in my area.

There are also a lot of 'League Night' type similar adventures from WotC designed to be run in a single sitting. Some of those are available online, although the WotC purge made a lot of these harder to find.

Finally, you can just wing it. The PCs never have to know there is no written adventure - just pick a MacGuffin, figure out a villain to have it, then give them some approipriate minions to help guard it. Then decide on a wrinkle - maybe a competing party of evil adventurers trying to also get it, but for nefarious reasons - or the MacGuffin causes natural disasters like earthquakes, storms, etc.. - and a fun location (volcano, sunken city, extraplanar, etc...) and it writes itself in your head pretty quickly. When you need an NPC, pick some vibrant character from a TV show (Cliff Clavin, Rupert Giles, Tyrion Lanaster, Ally McBeal, Shaft, Londo Mollari, Q, etc...) and use that as the template for the personality of a PC. Whether it is a perfect fit for the stereotypical bartender you're NPCing, or it is a cross casting, it will work. I've used this approach for on the spot games dozens of times and it works really well.

 

[Ezequielramone]

You can use en5ider, there are many adventures in there. I ran one that honoured Tomb of Horrors, it was super fun. I don't recommend you that particular one because is not the kind of adventure everyone enjoy. But there are many many many you can choose from.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Ninjas have kidnapped the princess. Are you bad enough Dudes/Dudettes to save the princess?