Your best "one shot" experience.

[Olive]

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

Can't say I'm surprised.

Mine was also a CoC experience, an adventure from the Unspeakable Oath, but no idea what the name was or what issue.

My caracter stayed sane and as a result died first. One other character went mad and stayed still, and the third ran screaming and was found a week later wandering the moor naked.

What's not to like?

 

[Nine Hands]

Leopold's G1 session at GenCon 2 years ago. Totally perfect gaming

 

[haiiro]

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.

What part of "one shot" makes them worried about the mortality rate? With CoC, that's half the fun -- the other half is seeing whether or not you go insane first.

 

[VorpalBunny]

What part of "one shot" makes them worried about the mortality rate? With CoC, that's half the fun -- the other half is seeing whether or not you go insane first.

These guys have never played CoC before, but they've heard the horror stories from other players. I guess they can't grok that going insane and dying at the hands of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know can be a hell o' lot of fun.

I'm wearing 'em down. Slowly.

 

[Silver Moon]

I did a short one from a Dungeon Magazine #85 that had to do with the party searching for petrified gnomes that giants had put in their garden. Very humorous.

 

[Erratic K]

As a player:

probably a D6 type game (super rules light), that a friend ran. It was loosely cyberpunk (set in just in the future- kind of like some of William Gibson's books). No magic, but some tech we don't have yet. It was great. Two great characters (we only had two players and a GM that time), a crazy plot and we came out on top- partially due to fortunate rolling and partially due to crazy actions that were plot affecting. It was a crazy combination of action, comedy and plot advancement- with crazy dice rolling.

We revisited the characters remade with different rules years later- it was not the same. Do not revisit flawless one-shots.

As a GM:
I'm not sure. A couple convention one shots have been good. The best con experience was running Speaker in Dreams once for a fantastic group. The group made the difference. Roleplaying and combat, they were great. They were really involved and made the module their own plot-wise. I guess they were active and interested in participating with the plot and that made the difference.

The other time that sticks out is pretty much any Feng Shui adventure that I have run. I play the CCG Shadowfist (which is related) sometimes, so I just pull a deck and made it into a scenario. After sketching it out on paper and making some notes, I made some character sheets (the players sometimes make their own). The players love it- Feng Shui is kinda fast and loose and cinematic and it was pretty cool as a one shot. We've never done campaigns- nobody cares for advancement when they are a movie hero (essentially).

I also recommend Mutants and Masternids as a one shot... superfun. Basically for one shots I've enjoyed Feng Shui, D&D (especially with hand out characters), Mutants and Masterminds, Dark Matter (and the D20 CoC, never played the older version).... and almost anybodies rules light crazy system.

-E

 

[Erratic K]

Forgot,

I'd love to d20 modern a one shot, but I haven't had the chance as a player or a GM

-E

 

[Rel]

I'm sure I'm not the only one wondering if Ashrem Bayle used any of our ideas. How did it go?

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Heh. It didn't. I was trying to get something together while I was at work, but I just had too much to do.

Another guy volunteered to run Cyberpunk, so we went with that.

Oh well.... thanks anyway guys!

 

[Berandor]

I've always wanted to run a "dungeon keeper"-esque one-shot where the players are the weakest kobolds of a tribe left behind when said tribe attacked a goblin hive.
Now, these weaklings see adventurers coming, and they must save the leader's room, the treasure chamber, the children and themselves. Fighting would be futile.
I'd map out the kobold lair, give them a timeframe and show them some traps they could built. From then on, just lean back and let them think...

My favorite one-shot I actually run was a christmas game. Basically, the players got plane-napped to the world of kuhrissmess. There an angry white dragon mother had retaliated on Santa Clause because he wouldn't give her three children a present.
She'd frozen Santa in a block of ice. Santa's elves had mounted the emergency sled and wanted the players to save him.
The players had full creative reign over the presents they wanted to bring - if any. On their way, frozen lakes, unstable bridges and yeti brought a little danger to it all.
It was cool. And now I'm ashamed that I don't remember the presents.