In praise of one-off sessions

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I've been my gaming group's perpetual GM for ages now, and it occured to me that there are a couple of reasons:

I played for ages in a group where we all tended to run one-off games, so I have a tendancy to pull short games off, in an interconnected game setting, with relative ease. This makes it look like I'm running some sort of vast and complex campaign, which sets the bar relatively high for other players thinking about GMing.

So I thought I'd blog about how one-off games are cool and easier than you'd think - and how to turn a bunch of one off games into a long running pseudo-campaign.

Here it is. (http://running-the-game.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/in-praise-of-one-off-sessions.html)

[Airk]

One shots are awesome for a lot of reasons, and it astonishes me that they seem to be so neglected. They're a ton less work and can be a lot more fun than a campaign.... and you can always grow them into the latter if they really worked for you.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I love one-offs because they're a great way to play new games. :smallbiggrin:

[Knaight]

I like one shots, but in practice I'm really bad at actually pulling them off - the beginning of the first session is often the hardest part to get right, and then there's the pacing.

Three shots though? Those are where it's at for my group. The key to them is to try for a one shot, and have it mysteriously happen to take three sessions.

[Airk]

I like one shots, but in practice I'm really bad at actually pulling them off - the beginning of the first session is often the hardest part to get right, and then there's the pacing.

Getting them started is easy. Do all the tiresome pre-setup ("Okay guys, why are you here?") beforehand. Start in the middle of the action, or at least the drama.

[Knaight]

Getting them started is easy. Do all the tiresome pre-setup ("Okay guys, why are you here?") beforehand. Start in the middle of the action, or at least the drama.

I do that - I'm a big fan of in media res, and can generally get everything going in a few minutes, but it still takes some time for people to adjust to their characters, and for people to get acquainted with setting elements, so on and so forth. I'm all about putting the pieces in place ahead of time, and not trying to build them as we go (I'm not big on the whole "you're a bunch of strangers, and may or may not even be in the same location" set up), but there's still some jostling to get them to fit right, so to speak.

Also, I play with a lot of very distractable people.