One-shot for my friends birthday?

[IslandDog]

Hey guys, as the title :p
Any tips for running one? I've never done it before. Players are semi-experienced. Any recommendations for books to buy or modules to run? Just looking for some more info!
Thanks in advance!

[Arc_knight25]

Piazo has some free one shot modules you can download from their store. I intend to use those modules to get some DMing experience before I take over our main campaign.

Make sure you have enough time. Read over any modules that are meant to be one shots and see how they are set up, and see how long each encounter should take and you should have an idea of what to expect.

So long as the players know it is a one shot, they might not mind being railroaded, but try to make it flow and give them the idea that they are making choices.

[Darrin]

Tomb of Horrors, if you can find the 3.5 update, makes for an interesting one-shot. Create a stack of pre-gens, and come up with some certificates or "prizes": Fewest Deaths, Most Interesting Death, Stupidest Death, Worst Bad Luck Death, and so forth.

[Arc_knight25]

Tomb of Horrors, if you can find the 3.5 update, makes for an interesting one-shot. Create a stack of pre-gens, and come up with some certificates or "prizes": Fewest Deaths, Most Interesting Death, Stupidest Death, Worst Bad Luck Death, and so forth.

We did this for a basic horror campaign that lasted the month of Oct. DM made like 30 some pre gen's had timed events through out the night, where people died very movie esque deaths. Felt like you were in Final Destination. As players we were just trying to find what was going on. Turned out that it was Loki trying to start Ragnarok so he could become Odin. It was a fun campaign.

I won for First death, and Last death. Almost got Sole Survivor as well, but another player was an old lady that beat up another PC that was possessed, they got off scot free, while my character went to meet Loki, were he committed suicide so Loki couldn't become Odin

The idea behind something like that would be to keep it simple. We only rolled a D20 had very sparing skills, like +2 to one or two skills. and NPC like stats. A few of the pre gens had elite npc arrays they were meant to be characters that would last.

[Bronk]

Hey guys, as the title :p
Any tips for running one? I've never done it before. Players are semi-experienced. Any recommendations for books to buy or modules to run? Just looking for some more info!
Thanks in advance!

Have you played together before? Do you have preexisting characters?

If you have, and you do, you could use the game to tie up some loose ends or do a quick side plot for an ongoing game.

If not, you could easily run a nice heist game or have them hired as mercs for a quick game.

This might be the perfect time for pregens with the expectation of a spectacular TPK at the end as well...