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View Full Version : Advice needed: Throwing a One-shot 3.5 Game



Sir Dayne
2010-06-05, 10:24 PM
Yes, as the title says, I am going to be throwing a one shot 3.5 edition D&D game, for a couple friends that I DMed for the past, completely new people who have minor D&D experience, and some newer people who have heard of it but never played. I call it a one shot game because it's going to be a game played through a single day, and I intend on resolving it in one setting as well.

I'm looking for advice from anyone who's done this or participated in one before, and what kind of setting or style may be good for this kind of deal? I will greatly appreciate any word or two cents.

Prodan
2010-06-05, 10:30 PM
Do not allow cellular phones.

tiercel
2010-06-06, 06:27 AM
With a number of people who are new/nearly new to the game, you should probably keep it low/1st level, and keep it fairly straightforward. Generating characters will take some time, getting used to the combat rules will too -- you don't want new players to have to wrap their brains too far around an unconventional setting / complex plot they won't be able to digest in a handful of hours.

Make sure the adventure has a clear goal which will be satisfying in and of itself to accomplish (e.g. rescuing a village from bandits/encamped monsters/etc), since XP/treasure won't matter much once the session ends.

Look out for modules you can adapt. They are designed to be adventures in a can, after all. The freebie The Burning Plague (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20000801a) isn't a bad place to start (you might have to read/tweak it a bit, since it's 3.0, but still). If nothing else, if you're looking at a pre-gen module you probably don't want it significantly *longer* than that.