Let's Talk About: One-Shots

[crunchykoolaid]

Hello there once again Playground!

This winter, my old DnD group is getting together again to roll some dice and take some names, but I'm stuck on how I should DM this. We won't have time for a full campaign, so I'm planning on doing one-shots, self-contained adventures that start and end in one or two sessions. I have a lot of ideas for adventures, and a general overarching reason this group is going on various adventures together, but I can't decide how interrelated I should make these adventures.

My specific question is this: How much should I hint at future plot hooks or reference previous quests during the course of a single adventure?

As a less specific request: If you have stories/advice about times you ran one-shots, I would love to hear them!

[WalkingTheShade]

What party level are you aiming for?

Regarding interrelatedness (is that even a word?), in the situation you describe, I think the most important thing is that each adventure should finish leaving a clear sense of closure.
Here's a comparison citing TV shows:
- On Lost, you get plot hooks and unexplained occurrences all over the place. Leading to epileptic trees (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EpilepticTrees) and wild mass guessing. Trying to guess an explanation for what's happening fuels suspense. Most episodes start by resolving the previous episode and proceed until a cliffhanger. Season endings work the same general way, bringing in twists from out of field, giving the axe to fan theories.
- On the Wire, you get plot hooks and Chekov's guns (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun). Episodes are mostly self contained and none, except one, end on a cliffhanger. Wondering how the story is going to proceed from there fuels suspense. Seasons endings bring a sense of closure to the whole season, leaving no loose ends.

What I'd do is write each adventure with a clear beginning and a few endgames in sight. Each end should ideally, if players succeed, resolve 99% of the premise. If players fail, then the next adventure might be one improvised to deal with the consequences of said failure.

There are many ways to give more coherence to a sequence of adventures. A few ideas:
- Unity of place: all adventures happen in the same region (one city, a small country-side domain, etc.). This gives the occasion to have recurring NPCs, and see how the PCs adventuring affects their surroundings.
- Unity of theme: all adventures have a common underlying theme. Each independent adventure tackles the theme in a different way, and might open different questions or give different answers.
- Unity of antagonists: all adventures are triggered by the same antagonist(s). Each adventure sees the player trying to defeat one aspect of an antagonist's masterplan. That's how most 3.X adventure paths seem to be made.

The contradiction to solve is providing enough unity for the sequence to feel coherent as a whole, while giving closure to each individual element of the sequence on its own.

[crunchykoolaid]

Thanks for your advice!

My party will be starting at 1st level, and I expect to get to around 10-12th. As of right now, I have specific events written out, such as a village getting attacked by a coalition of Mephits, or a series of challenges the party must complete and then retrace their steps through while being chased by a T-Rex in difficult weather.

To connect these, I've come up with the idea that a mysterious benefactor is paying the group to retrieve "crystallized spells", artifacts from a previous civilization that basically act as a constant source of a preset spell, albeit unpredictably and dangerously. This way, the crystals can be either the McGuffin they need to retrieve or the source of the plot hook by themselves (i.e. they party finds an Animate Dead crystallized spell in a town plagued by undead).

Edit: I've made a separate thread to talk about crystallized spells, so this one can stay about One-Shots

[Uncle Pine]

One-shots by definitions are standalone adventures that start and end in one gaming session (or a couple, depending on their length). What you're trying to accomplish looks less like a series of one-shots and more like a "Fetch the McGuffins"/"Monster of the Week" series of adventures tied together with some light plot elements in the background to me. And reading again I'm not even sure whether the plot elements are really light or not. In both cases, if you need to run short adventures because your group has a tight schedule, five room dungeons can be an extremely useful tool: here (http://www.gnomestew.com/tools-for-gms/the-nine-forms-of-the-five-room-dungeon/)'s an online article that can introduce you to this concept if you haven't already heard about it.

Whenever I feel creative and want to throw a one-shot at my players for the hell of it, I run TV Tropes' Story Generator (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/storygen.php) and either roll a d20 to decide the level of the one-shot or choose a level myself. Try it if you find yourself out of good ideas! Last time I did it, I got Swamps Are Evil (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SwampsAreEvil)1, Settling The Frontier (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SettlingTheFrontier)2, Rear Window Witness (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RearWindowWitness)3, Anti-Antichrist (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiAntichrist)4, Black Cloak (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackCloak)5, Nurse With Good Intentions (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NurseWithGoodIntentions)6 and Age-Appropriate Angst (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AgeAppropriateAngst)7 and an 11: the characters all lived in this small village built under a great oak tree in a forest. The village mayor was a LG blue slaad Paladin4 that always wore a huge black cloak5 (hence why part of the population claimed he was actually a malign creature and would've killed them all one day). Since a group of lizardmen from the near swamp1 had been harassing the village in the last few days, the party was supposed to head toward the swamp and kill all the lizardfolks, securing the village's borders and maybe even creating some sort of outpost near the swamp2. At the beginning of the session, one of the characters (who was engaged to the beautiful but totally ditz foster daughter of the mayor6) got to hear part of a conversation the mayor had with another black cloaked scaled figure5 that could've been easily misunderstood as the mayor plotting with the enemy3, but he and the rest of the party still sided with the mayor when his political opponents eventually accused the mayor of treason and tried to start a small revolution in the village. After that, the party (with the mayor daughter acting as a healer, even though most of the time she was more of a nuisance than anything else) finally headed towards the swamp and killed some weird swamp vermins, a giant telepatic venomous crocodile and many lizardmen and slaadi. They even killed the youngs and smashed the lizardmen's eggs7. In the end, they managed to save the village and the mayor. By the way, did I mention that I applied the Miniature template from Advanced Bestiary (= shrink the creature, its damage, its speed etc. by four categories) to everyone in the campaign except for the PC who was playing as a Drunken Master awakened badger and the enemies?

If you need some inspiration, you could also have a look at the Tome of Adventure Design. I think it's worth a reading for every DM out there.

[WalkingTheShade]

Whenever I feel creative and want to throw a one-shot at my players for the hell of it, I run TV Tropes' Story Generator and either roll a d20 to decide the level of the one-shot or choose a level myself.
Heh, I've always wanted to experiment with that. I'm glad to see you've had such a success out of it!

[Eno Remnant]

Four days ago I ran a Halloween one-shot. The group are split up between Australia and America, so we don't have a lot of time per session. Ended up having to cut all but four encounters, most of the roleplaying and--I kid you not--all of the plot. My advice therefore becomes: when you one-shot, go combat-lite. You don't want to be where I was, having the first encounter go for an hour (in a four or five hour session) and having no time for all of the other stuff you meant to do that session.

As for interconnectivity between one-shots, as has been said, that defeats calling them one-shots. At this point they're adventures, and should be thought of accordingly if you want to make the most out of them. But connections are always a good thing. I personally have a habit of turning any little adventure my group performs into part of a larger, open campaign world I've been running for a while, and it adds depth that would have taken me so much more effort to come up with just for that world.

Best of luck with it!

[Uncle Pine]

Heh, I've always wanted to experiment with that. I'm glad to see you've had such a success out of it!

I definitely suggest you to try it if you get the chance to do so: it's a great tool for any one-shots creator! You can come up with some really crazy things, especially if you start to subvert, double subvert, lampshade, deconstruct, etc. the various tropes you end up using. You can also create a new batch if you don't like the tropes you got (even though I try to avoid doing that and use everything to experiment with new situations).
Another thing I usually do is applying the "protagonist's" tropes to cohorts, allies or other NPCs the PCs will encounter to avoid to impose a type of character to a player.