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View Full Version : Running a One-Shot for people who don't play (!?)



zeek0
2015-04-15, 02:51 PM
At the moment, I am living with a few guys who are not into tabletop roleplaying games. They know that I do play D&D on Saturdays, and they have been interested in what that looks like, and enjoy asking me questions about what it looks like. Yesterday in the course of conversation they asked me to GM for them, and I accepted readily.

I know that they will probably enjoy the experience because they play Skyrim, and enjoy board games. I think that there may be difficulties because they are not practiced at roleplaying and are unfamiliar with roleplaying games in every way (I had to have an honest talk with them about not trivializing or otherwise demeaning the practice; they were very respectful after that).

A few of them created their characters yesterday evening, and I was glad to see that they enjoyed it. Oddly enough, both characters have relatively low hp.

What kind of One-Shot ought I create for them? What story elements should I include? What might be too difficult for them to interact with?

Any advice is welcome - thanks!

Knaight
2015-04-15, 03:07 PM
You've got a group of new players who are genuinely interested - that leaves a lot of options. They aren't used to the roleplaying end, so I generally wouldn't expect much in the way of in-character dialog (though if they have theater improv experience, that expectation gets flipped in a big way), and D&D is a pretty complex rules set that takes a lot of getting used to. Basically, there's a lot to learn. As such, I'd recommend picking something comparatively straightforward, which doesn't assume too much mechanical mastery or role playing practice.

Personally, I have a handful of things I keep on hand, that I've run before and know work well for single sessions. None are commercial though, so that's not much help.

Geddy2112
2015-04-15, 03:22 PM
Make it an easy, newbie friendly out of the box adventure. Just like teaching somebody how to do something new, you need to make it easy but also fun. If you have never skied before, a double black diamond slope is too hard, but the bunny slope will quickly bore them.

Start with a standard adventure in a box- characters get a quest from an NPC in a tavern. Quest invariably puts party into combat, or has a random encounter. Make sure there is a little roleplay, but focus on the adventure, enemies, skill checks etc.

My default is either a delivery or escort mission, where there is possibly a troll/orge/similar enemy on the route there.

JeenLeen
2015-04-15, 03:46 PM
One game I think could be fun would be either the second or third one-shot game in Pathfinder Society's introductory 3 games, the ones that players are supposed to do before they choose a faction. I'd recommend the third one, and just replace 'the Society sends you to do...' with 'your party is approached by a guildmember asking you to..." and now it's independent of Pathfinder. I think all the stuff in the module either fits D&D 3.5 or could easily be modified to fit it. I like it because it involves some social/investigative stuff along with exploration and combat.

Short summary


1. Party is asked to deliver a message to some group on an island a bit away from the main town, at the same time bringing an artifact there to trade. They can't just take a boat there because an enemy guild is watching the town and would attack. A guy is sent to assist you in verifying the artifact you are trading for.
2. Some random fights on the way. On the way, you can discover that your 'assistant' is faking a limp and some other stuff. He's actually there to help out if the level 1 chars can't handle their own and not evil, but.. honestly, he comes off as "gonna betray you later" trope to me. We called him on his fake limp, and he admitted that he likes to act feeble to throw off observers.
3. You get to a town and have to find passage to the island. There's a few options, giving chance for social or investigative rolls.
4. At the town, you get to the meeting site (a bar), but it turns out the folk there to trade with you are actually spies for the other guild and try to steal the artifact. Fight to try to stop them. You can also deliver the letter to the embassy there.

Note: you could easily drop the 'letter to embassy' part and just make it an artifact trade mission.


I think there's a free download of it somewhere on the Pathfinder site (http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety), but I'm not finding it.
EDIT: maybe cut out some of the 'difficulties while traveling' to make sure it stays as a one-shot. I forget all the encounters on the road, but it might be more than could easily fit into a night, especially with inexperienced players.

EDIT 2: found it. http://paizo.com/products/btpy8jot?Pathfinder-Society-Scenario-Intro-3-First-Steps-Part-III-A-Vision-of-Betrayal

Spojaz
2015-04-15, 04:01 PM
Angry DM's take on the subjust (http://www.madadventurers.com/angry-rants-new-players/)
(swearing aside), I have been enthralled by the quality of the content at that blog lately, and this post about reaching new players especially. I especially agree with the part where you only explain rules to a player when they come up for that player. this is very important to keep them from getting lost in the fireswamp that is the rules of tabletop roleplaying.

Akodo Makama
2015-04-15, 04:34 PM
Go to http://www.roleplayingtips.com/5-room-dungeons/

These are simple, rules-independent mini-adventures for people to go on. They have a variety of encounter types, held together by a common theme. They follow a classic plot trope: Guardian (Why hasn't someone already done this), Puzzle (Need to think laterally), Setback (things aren't as easy as they appear), Climax (Things just got real), Reward (why we're all here), which helps people with any background in literature of any type be familiar with what is happening, even when the exact scenario may be completely alien.

I have found the set to be invaluable in creating one-shots or interlude adventures/side-quests for established parties.

Also: Pre-made characters (about 1.5 per expected player) with a variety of very trope-based abilities is a boon for newbies. And if you must use D&D, be very light with the rules.

The Evil DM
2015-04-15, 06:43 PM
There was once an old article in Dragon Magazine called Keep em Guessing.

It is from issue 49 in May 1981 and reprinted in Best of Dragon Magazine #5.

If you can find that article it has some very good techniques I still use today and they work very well for new players who don't know all the rules because the DM makes the game rules transparent. All the players need is to be told when they need to roll the die and the DM does all the work.

Then you let them learn the rules later. Just have fun with the role play aspect.

Edit: If interested in the article, I have a pdf copy I can email

zeek0
2015-04-15, 09:45 PM
Thanks for all of your assistance!
Thankfully, I am running D&D 5e, so I will not be making them brave through 3.5.

To give more context, these are people who are frankly far removed from this kind of community - they are cyclists, and I waited a good few months before I was open about my Saturday activities. I have been GMing for a year and have experience, but I wanted to get some feedback from all on how you might GM for people who are tenuous about the experience.

I do want them to have some social encounters so that they can experience some of the more open parts of tabletop roleplaying. What kind of situations do you find help new players unfamiliar with the genre engage?

Thanks!

oball
2015-04-16, 01:12 AM
My DM ran a short campaign to introduce a friend of his from work to D&D (PF in this case) - it wasn't quite the same as your situation as the other two people in the group (myself and another) have been playing for years, but there were some things he did that I think worked well (especially since she's kept playing with us for a year :P ).

- Keep it simple, mechanically and storywise: we all started at Level 2. Not too many options in combat, no confusing, multiple sources of bonuses to add up (although from what I understand 5e simplifies this anyway). For starting story, we were all youngsters in a village being asked to prove ourselves by taking a ritual offering to a mountaintop shrine as part of a harvest festival. The story did build up later, as we played more sessions, but each new facet to it was introduced organically, without a huge infodump required. You don't want to overwhelm them with complicated rules or fluff, so start slow and build up.

- Backstory: Even if they only provide a few lines, use that to help you give them some kind of connection to the world. Tell them a bit about where they will be starting and ask why they think their character might be there - in our case, we had all grown up in the village, so each of us had an NPC - a parent, a mentor, a superior in the local church - with whom we interacted to start with. The DM roleplayed a short interaction for both myself and the other guy with our significant NPCs first, so that the new player had some idea of how things go - if you have a gaming friend who is good at roleplaying that you can get to come along to serve as an example, that might help. Regardless, if they have a reason to be in the situation you start them in, that might help build that sense of connection.

- Options! For most of the combats/encounters we had, there was a chance to talk first, or approach it in some other way apart from charging in. If you let them know that not every encounter needs to be solved with violence, you may avoid training a bunch of murderhobos :P Also, prioritise fun over rules - they are new to this so you really want to encourage and reward outside the box thinking: if one of them has a crazy idea that is not strictly rules legal (or is super complicated), shrug and say "Sure!" when they ask if they can do it. The main attraction of roleplaying is the flexibility and freedom - this is not Skyrim, they have infinite options for dealing with situations - you want to emphasise that.

Also keep things open for the possibility that they might want to play more sessions - I know you say "one-shot", but hopefully if everything goes well what they say at the end of the night will be "So when are we playing next?". Don't lay out tracks for a campaign, but drop some hints that there are bigger things going on in the background, dangle a few juicy hooks - with luck they might bite!

Gritmonger
2015-04-16, 01:40 AM
I forgot - I once ran a game for nine individuals, seven of which had never played before - and I ran it as a 0th level campaign - everybody was a base commoner with four hitpoints, and how they role-played determined what classes they eventually advanced to when they "got" first level.

They had a mystery to solve regarding some creatures that were plaguing their village, and the guy with the high INT who initially intended on being a wizard managed to talk the town council into loaning him something to help deal with the threat: one ancient, rusty set of full plate. Then and there, the nine-strength high-int fellow decided he wanted to be a fighter.

Meanwhile, the fellow who initially said he was set on being a ranger: researched what was going on with any local lore or records he could find, skulked about and used eavesdropping and rumor-mongering to manipulate people into telling him what he wanted to know, and practiced skills he didn't have immediate access to (made base ability checks for skills he didn't have in order to do mostly social things). He was essentially playing a bard... he wasn't happy with that at first, until I explained it just meant being able to do more of what he was already doing.

Super-low level with no class considerations was the way to go for them - it introduced them to basic mechanics like die-rolling, but was largely role-playing and a scenario that was more of a mystery.

With 5th Edition, you could have players just pick a background, no class, and give them a few hit points to start with along with their beginning proficiencies from background and race.