Your best "one shot" experience.

[EricNoah]

Alternity/DarkMatter one-shot set on New Years Eve 1999, run pretty much in real time to coincide with the start of Y2K. My wife and our best friends played in this one. They got to stop my wife's place of work (a convention center) from being bombed by a wicked diabolist.

For this same group I ran a Star Wars one-shot where the PCs were helping deliver the Death Star plans to Princess Leia. One of the PCs was an ex-stormtrooper with a hidden agenda (was training to be one of those Red Guard dudes).

 

[Shallown]

I ran a few tournament modules for a local store several years back and I wanted to run non-standard modules along with the very standard ones I had written.

I stole two ideas I had heard from people at Ambercon a Convention for amber gamers so here they are.

The Children's Hour.

Basically I handed out these really min maxed characters with lots of nifty magic items then asked them what they were basically doiing day to day. the normal set up.

Then I told them they awakened and everything seemd a little larger than usually and it was cold and uncomfortable in the place they were sleeping. More or less they becam children.. Mechanics wise I halfed their level and stats just to make things easy (I think they started out 6th in 2nd ed). Proceeded to let the explore the orphanage were they were. they occasionally would find items of theirs that they had lost. hid rings in chandalers gauntlets of ogre power on Helga the Disiplinarian sure hurt when she spanked you.

The main idea is to get them to fall into the mind set they are kids without ever telling them they are. Yes they appear to be kids but they are still better than average. You need to miss in other kids as well. Some may have items of theirs as well slippers of spiderclimbing was a fun one to hand out. If they act ordinary the adults just dismiss them as having active imaginations.

Then have the first child's body appear. Make it gruesome and horrifing. Someone they have formed an attachement to already. The adults just push it aside as nothing getting rid of the evidence.Let them explore the grounds but everything dissappears into mist after a few hundred feet.

I had one room that the "Headmaster" was in. No one was allowed in and the door just wouldn't open until the Gm was ready. The murderer was a dopplganger child who led them a merry chase by the end when the solve it the Headmaster was found to be Loki god of mischief who did it all becuase he was bored but remember it was still all real children who died.

I thought it was pretty disturbing an I was running it.


Next the Grandfather Clause

The second adventure was the players all high level 10-12th in 2nd ed. Running into a wild mage who used Chronomancer magic. In a wild surge they all awaken in aged tired bodies in a retirment home for adventurers set up by the king to keep senile wizards and fighters of extreme skill under wraps. Iplayed thisone fast and loose and basically they had to convince the Wild mage who had become very senile to cast the same spell to get them back. This was another fun one and a lot less gruesome.

later

 

[VorpalBunny]

Pagan RAWKS, and CoC is the best.

Got that right! I'd loooove to run a DG or CoC one-shot for my current group, but the mortality rate of most CoC games is scaring them away.

 

[s/LaSH]

I played in a con game once. Basic plot: We're colonial marines, we survived our first encounter with the Aliens, we're chasing a corporate ship that somehow got away with an egg, and we've chased them to a desolate facility on some dead world.

Things get twisted from there.

We used a variant of Fighting Fantasy. The only time rolls were made were to see if the Alien killed us. Mostly, it did, but we only saw it twice all day. I may have killed it in the end, actually, which was cool. (And I got my CO court-martialled for using nukes. Oh well.)

The cool thing about an Aliens game of this type is, we already knew everything we needed to about the xenomorphs in character, and that was enough to fear them. We were all quite willing to literally nuke ourselves so long as we got it too. It was wonderful.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

There was some early one-shot they put out for 3e that involved Kobolds in a mine and everyone getting a nasty fever.

Great one-shot adventure. Little bit of intrigue, a good bit of challenging combat, some humor, and neat survival tests as you had to get through both nasty amounts of cold weather and a constitution sucking disease.

I really felt like I had accomplished something heroic when we finished that little scenario. What with the high fatality rate and all...

 

[nimisgod]

The best one nighter one-shot I ever played was set in Rokugan using the original (and deadly) L5R d10 system. Each of the players was given a random profession (ninja, magistrate, duelist, etc.), though we got to choose our clan.

Basically, what was supposed to be two groups of PCs trying to outsmart and kill the each other turned out to be a free for all. Only one survived, yours truly, but only after barely killing the PC who was responsible for practically everyone's deaths.

After that game, I was forever enamored of the Crab Clan. That normally useless rank in Juijutsu saved my ass. Actually, mostly dumb, idiotic luck. Managed to roll a 40 with only 2k2 to detect poison hehe...

 

[Dungannon]

Best one-shot I played in was at Dragonflight '97 in Seattle. A DM duo ran an adventure where we played a party of mid-high level (10-13) drow sent to stop an illithid community from completing a ritual that would give them enough power to dominate the Underworld. The party was made up of drow from two rival houses accompanied by an illithid (controlled by the second DM) who was supposed to be an ally and our guide through their lair. Each character, in addition to the stated goal of the party, had an additional secret goal that they had to complete to gain a bonus reward. I played a rogue who's secret goal was to assassinate the daughter of a rival house that was assigned to the party.

The first part of the mission occured underwater which was a new experience for me. Then we had to make our way through the lair of the illithids. All in all, a very fun game filled with lots of intrigue.

We failed in our mission and the illithids were able to complete their ritual. The goal of the ritual? To summon Cthulhu, of course.

 

[Morpheus]

A CoC adventure called The Horrible Secret of Monhegan Island that we played in the Maine woods at night by flashlight in the back of camper truck. I remember someone walking by and scaring the bejeezus out of us. Good times, good times...

 

[Hammerhead]

The best one-shot adventure I played was a WUSHU: The Ancient Art of Action Roleplaying game set in the Matrix. It was only about two hours long, but I had a blast. I liked the innovative, if one-dimensional characters we used.

 

[Wraith Form]

It doesn't seem to be a co-incidence that a large percentage of posts were CoC scenarios.

I'd ask for comments, but I'm afraid the whole topic would get railroaded..!