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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5031848" data-attributes="member: 61155">I ran a holiday one-shot either last year, or the year before. It was simaltaneously a tie-in to my current campaign (an oriental adventures/rokugan-inspired D&D setting), while also being an obvious christmas parody.  In my ongoing game, the PCs were heroes working to stop some ancient Oni who had been bound away by the good guy during an epic war at the dawn of time.  The one-shot took place in that war, and the PCs got to play the bad guys, using a variety of monstrous races, all adjusted to be appropriate to the setting. (They had a troll, a frog shaman (grey slaad), a rakshasa, etc). They were sent on a mission to the far north, to defeat the Crafter - a master smith of the Kami who forged mighty, powerful weapons of magic for the war.  They arrived at his domain to find it guarded by ice elementals and one of the Crafter's greatest servants, a noble caribou over fifteen feet tall, whose face glows with a burning light! At which point I put down a Rudolf toy to represent the Awakened Dire Elk Cleric, and Frosty the Snowman toys to represent the snow elementals, and the players realized it was going to be one of those games. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I had picked up a bunch of cheap christmas toys that happened to fit perfectly as minis on the battlemap, and so the rest of the encounters were much the same - they later fought huge wooden constructs (Nutcrackers), Christmas Elves, and finally the Crafter himself (Santa Claus!)  Stat-wise, Santa was a Storm Giant Saint Were-Dire Polar Bear Artisan 1. I had both a regular Santa figure, as well as a polar bear Santa (which is what inspired the Werebear aspect). It was a silly and completely ridiculous game, but everyone had a lot of fun, and the use of holiday toys and figures as miniatures worked out brilliantly for setting the mood. Being able to have it work both from an in-character aspect, as well as the out-of-game parody, really kept everyone invested in the game on multiple levels.</blockquote>

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