Trying to make a cohesive story out of one-shots.

[strangebloke]

The group I'm playing with currently loves building new characters. Since we'll all be going separate ways after this coming school year, one of my friends suggested that I DM a series of one-shots so that we can all have a chance to try out all of those weird character concepts we've come up with over the years.

If at all possible, I would prefer to keep a coherent story going between these one-shots, simply because it is easier for me as a DM and because it will give my players a reason to keep playing.

My current idea is that each of them is a heroic spirit that, every hundred years or so, reincarnates in a new form. So they have their memories from previous play sessions, but the characters are completely different.

I'm really struggling with how I can give them a consistent antagonist through all of the centuries without being really boring.

What kind of antagonist would you recommend? Does this idea seem too far-fetched? Is there a better way to achieve the same effect?

[Craft (Cheese)]

Actually, I think a more interesting handle would be to make it a twist: The players are all playing the reincarnations of their past characters, but they don't find out until the end when it becomes important. Similarly the recurrence of the antagonist should be a twist: They should look completely separate until the connection between them all is revealed somehow.

[Extra Anchovies]

Maybe something in a smaller time-span might be a little easier to do. One idea that springs to mind is setting the adventures during a war, with the characters' role dependent on their level. The low-level PCs could be organizing the evacuation of a village before an approaching army or drumming up support for an underground resistance against occupying forces. Mid-level adventures could involve attacking supply chains, or assisting the defense during a siege. High-level PCs could be recruiting powerful outsiders or dragons to their side's cause, or slipping past enemy lines to infiltrate and destroy a heavily-guarded command post.

All the adventures could be going on in a similar time-span, and you could jump back and forth in levels easily. Maybe the first adventure could be some high-level PCs scoring a crucial victory that lets their faction keep in the fight (along the lines of destroying the death star, where the tide is not turned but the heroes' forces are saved from total defeat), possibly the aforementioned infiltrate-and-destroy mission. The second could be the village evacuation; the (temporary) destruction of the enemy's main headquarters has delayed troop movements enough that there is now a narrow window of escape. Next the PCs could be mid/low-level recruiters for an underground resistance in an occupied city, and one or two of the people they pick up fled to the city from the village in the previous adventure. Then the party is the mid/high-level resistance leadership, organizing the overthrow and expulsion of the city's occupiers. The next adventure could be in a nearby besieged city, with the PCs part of a defense effort rejuvenated by news of the successful rebellion. After that they could be on a mission to cut one or more enemy supply lines to lift the siege. One of the adventures could be a team of spies gathering intelligence (through magic and stealth) about an enemy army, followed by an "adventure" where the PCs are generals putting that information to good use.

If this sort of thing sounds like something you want to try, Complete Warrior has a beautiful chapter on fantasy warfare, complete with tables for randomly generating military adventures (roll for objective, roll for complication, roll for the type of support/reinforcements available).

ETA a clarification: the PCs in one particular adventure would probably have heard of, and maybe even met, the PCs from earlier adventures. The first adventure's elite infiltration team would be regarded as heroes by nearly everyone in their faction, the villagers are given time to escape by the confusion after the HQ's destruction, the recruiters come into contact with some of the NPC villagers, the resistance leadership might have just yesterday given commendations to the recruiters for the boost in membership, the besieged citizens would received smuggled-in reports of the nearby rebellion, and so on.

[Milodiah]

One-shots in D&D are always great for worldbuilding, in my opinion. The actions of the last PCs can form tavern rumors and anecdotes far off from the actual place they occurred, or can leave palpable scars at its epicenter (like scorched forests, in our group's case).

At the same time, the tavern rumors the last guys heard about are now the focus of this session's adventure. A dragon torched the latest caravan going north to the frontier colonies, you say? Well then, next game is the colony's best men and women being sent on a perilous journey to scrounge the much-needed supplies from a recently abandoned colony even further into the uninhabited hinterlands. Nobody's quite sure what the interior of the far eastern reaches of the continent holds? Your players are now hired guards on an expedition destined to answer that question, for good or ill.

It should be shoggoths, of course. Elder cities populated by shoggoths.

[strangebloke]

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That is a really fun idea for the second session! It could keep them involved just when they would otherwise start to lose interest.

Snip
I really like this idea as well, and I particularly like how easy it is for me as a DM.

I'm a little worried that my group wouldn't want to do any more low level one-shots after doing a few high-level ones, which puts me in the situation of having a ludicrous number of high-level characters at a single battlefield.

I guess that I could have them switch sides as well, which would open up more possibilities.

Maybe I could have each adventure scale up the party level a notch, just like in a standard campaign, with the final one-shot being the climatic battle with the leaders of the army.

[dysprosium]

Building on the reincarnation ideas:

The BBEG in question would either have to be long lived and powerful to be a constant threat to the PCs and the world at large.

Either that or he is also being reincarnated into the world at the same time the PCs are. A constant antagonist who is always clashing with the PCs. Destiny always brings these people together.

[Extra Anchovies]

That is a really fun idea for the second session! It could keep them involved just when they would otherwise start to lose interest.

I really like this idea as well, and I particularly like how easy it is for me as a DM.

I'm a little worried that my group wouldn't want to do any more low level one-shots after doing a few high-level ones, which puts me in the situation of having a ludicrous number of high-level characters at a single battlefield.

I guess that I could have them switch sides as well, which would open up more possibilities.

Maybe I could have each adventure scale up the party level a notch, just like in a standard campaign, with the final one-shot being the climatic battle with the leaders of the army.

I (along with the rest of my gaming group) have found that low-level adventures can be just as enjoyable as high-level ones, as long as they're run properly and they don't follow the standard "three rooms of monsters, a boss, and his treasure hoard" formula. We ran a few sessions where all the players were first-level experts, tasked with delivering mail to the nearby towns, and much of our efforts were put towards making sure we gathered enough food for the next leg of the journey (not to mention avoiding bears). There was only about one combat encounter per session, but it was still some of the best fun we've ever had.

Of course, that's the group I'm in; yours may have an entirely different style of play. Nonetheless, the low-level adventures could present a different sort of challenge from the high-level adventures. To draw from the ideas I've named:
-the fleeing villagers would have to maintain a certain pace (in miles/day) to keep ahead of the enemy; they may have to leave behind potentially useful items in order to move faster (while still having time to forage), which could lead to some tough choices. Do they leave the rope behind, so none of them has a medium load, or do they hang onto it in case they need to climb, and hope that they're still going fast enough? There could be fewer combat encounters, but even one incapacitated character could be a game-over for that group of peasants; they wouldn't have time to spare for a full day of rest.
-the recruiters would have to first determine whether a potential recruit is an enemy spy, and then have to convince them to join (resisting the occupiers is, after all, a capital offense); discovery and subsequent pursuit by city guards could necessitate the use of disguises or other covert means.

That sort of thing. The mid/high-level adventures (of which there should be a lot more) let players test out zany character ideas (Warlock/Monk/Enlightened Fist! Duskblade/Dragon Disciple! Feat-Rogue/Swashbuckler/Pious Templar/Duelist! Anything else under the sun!), and the occasional low-level adventure would let them put their problem-solving skills to the test without having Raise Dead and Teleport to fall back on.

If it seems like I'm going into excessive detail on specifics here, it's because I've decided that I want to run a series of one-offs set during a war. Thank you for this thread.

[Red Fel]

Rather than a chronological series of adventures, I see a contemporaneous series of adventures. Each features a different batch of unrelated PCs, each in a different part of the world, but all occurring at roughly the same time, and tied together with an anchor event at the end of each one-shot.

Adventure the first, an Indiana Jones-style journey through a booby-trapped temple full of dangers, skill checks, and undead and construct temple guardians. At the treasure room, the party faces down with an unexpectedly powerful rival treasure hunter. The party defeats him, but he escapes with something innocuous, like an ancient hairpin or something... But not before setting off a trap, leading to your typical flee-the-collapsing-temple chase. Finishing, they emerge into the daylight to see the sky light up with bright lights, then suddenly go pitch black.

Adventure the second, a heist. The party has to break into the keep and steal something of value. Once past the walls, guards, etc., they find... Another rival thief. Combat, they beat him, he grabs something unobtrusive (perhaps a small crystal ball) and turns tail. The party must then escape from the now-alerted castle with their loot. As they celebrate, the sky lights up, and then goes out.

Adventure the third, straight-up combat. A warlord and his men have taken over a small keep, and the party must rescue the surrounding countryside by defeating him. Again, at the last moment, he grabs something from his throne room (maybe an old sword) and escapes. Lights on, lights off. (Seeing a pattern?)

Adventure the final. The heroes of the nation have been called upon to root out a terrible cult in the keep on the hill. The cult has been preparing for some dark ritual, by sending its agents to collect relics that will fuel their leader's apotheosis. The party charges in, past the cultists, to find the more powerful agents of the cult - a spelunking adventurer, a cat-burglar, a warlord, etc. The bosses of prior one-shots, having just returned with their spoils. Because they're still weak, these once-boss encounters are more like slightly more powerful mid-bosses. Big reveal, the stuff they grabbed wasn't consolation prizes, but the stuff they really wanted in the first place. Face-off with the cult leader, he performs his ritual, explosion of light, sky goes dark, final battle. Save the world.

The individual leading-up adventures can be modified, depending on whether your party likes skill-based encounters, combat, social, or what-have-you. But the recipe is always the same - party is after one objective, confronts a rival, rival escapes with a bauble, fireworks show. The final one-shot ties everything together nicely.

[Extra Anchovies]

Rather than a chronological series of adventures, I see a contemporaneous series of adventures. Each features a different batch of unrelated PCs, each in a different part of the world, but all occurring at roughly the same time, and tied together with an anchor event at the end of each one-shot.

Adventure the first, an Indiana Jones-style journey through a booby-trapped temple full of dangers, skill checks, and undead and construct temple guardians. At the treasure room, the party faces down with an unexpectedly powerful rival treasure hunter. The party defeats him, but he escapes with something innocuous, like an ancient hairpin or something... But not before setting off a trap, leading to your typical flee-the-collapsing-temple chase. Finishing, they emerge into the daylight to see the sky light up with bright lights, then suddenly go pitch black.

Adventure the second, a heist. The party has to break into the keep and steal something of value. Once past the walls, guards, etc., they find... Another rival thief. Combat, they beat him, he grabs something unobtrusive (perhaps a small crystal ball) and turns tail. The party must then escape from the now-alerted castle with their loot. As they celebrate, the sky lights up, and then goes out.

Adventure the third, straight-up combat. A warlord and his men have taken over a small keep, and the party must rescue the surrounding countryside by defeating him. Again, at the last moment, he grabs something from his throne room (maybe an old sword) and escapes. Lights on, lights off. (Seeing a pattern?)

Adventure the final. The heroes of the nation have been called upon to root out a terrible cult in the keep on the hill. The cult has been preparing for some dark ritual, by sending its agents to collect relics that will fuel their leader's apotheosis. The party charges in, past the cultists, to find the more powerful agents of the cult - a spelunking adventurer, a cat-burglar, a warlord, etc. The bosses of prior one-shots, having just returned with their spoils. Because they're still weak, these once-boss encounters are more like slightly more powerful mid-bosses. Big reveal, the stuff they grabbed wasn't consolation prizes, but the stuff they really wanted in the first place. Face-off with the cult leader, he performs his ritual, explosion of light, sky goes dark, final battle. Save the world.

The individual leading-up adventures can be modified, depending on whether your party likes skill-based encounters, combat, social, or what-have-you. But the recipe is always the same - party is after one objective, confronts a rival, rival escapes with a bauble, fireworks show. The final one-shot ties everything together nicely.

This is a really great idea. The PCs probably wouldn't notice the pattern until the third time it happened, and from that point forth they'd be looking for patterns in everything, and trying to guess what it is that their adversary nabs. Almost a Groundhog Day-like effect, where each scenario is similar to the last and the PCs learn a bit more each time. The final adventure ends with them escaping the loop. Even though they won't know what (if anything) exists outside the linked continuities, if you put the players on a treadmill they will want to jump off. Except in this case, their jumping off is part of the plan. I like.

[strangebloke]

Thanks so much for all of the help guys! I think that the concurrent adventures idea will work out much better.

[Bronk]

Actually, I think a more interesting handle would be to make it a twist: The players are all playing the reincarnations of their past characters, but they don't find out until the end when it becomes important. Similarly the recurrence of the antagonist should be a twist: They should look completely separate until the connection between them all is revealed somehow.

I like this idea a lot. If I were to take a stab at this, I'd plan out a series of adventures where the PCs become entwined in fate with the BBEG, which would be a series of increasingly powerful undead. First game, level 1, take on some skeletons or zombies. Second game, level 6, take on some shadows or something led by a more powerful undead, and so on, up to 11, 16, and even on into epic levels at 21 and beyond.

The idea would be that the adventures would be separate, and the only underlying theme need be that they fight some form of undead at some point in each adventure, and that each player would choose a different class for each game.

I don't know how many game sessions you have left to play with your friends, and things change, so perhaps you're not sure either. However many it is, the last session would involve the most powerful iteration yet of the PCs, and they would run into an undead creature more powerful than they could normally handle at their level (mummy? lich? demilich?). That one would turn out to be some sort of mastermind, and reveal the truth of their reincarnations... and that he's extremely angry that they've thwarted his plans across the ages. Maybe at level one you killed skeletons sent to be minions to one of his servants. At level 6 you saved a princess from a sacrifice that would have empowered one of his plans. At level 11 you redeemed an evil artifact that he wanted, and so on.

For the finale, the PCs can find a way to discover the (perhaps divine or fated) reason they have been reborn to fight this foe so many times, and reconnect with their former lives to help fight their ultimate enemy. Doing so enables them to pick their favorite former character to aide in the struggle.... and they fuse together, become a gestalt character of both classes at their current level for the last few fights.

You can end the fight with them victorious, or with their glorious deaths with the knowledge that they'll get another chance at life, and perhaps adventure as well. Then tell your players that should you ever get together to play again, it'll be at the next highest five level iteration (or skip to epic), and as gestalt characters.

I'd imagine this would work with dragons, demons and so on as the primary antagonists as well.