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Kol Korran
2016-10-03, 08:51 AM
Guy, Alon, Adam, Tomer, Uri- If you're reading this, please don't continue. It will spoil the game. :smalltongue:

Hey there! Our regular play group is pausing the regular play due to one player not being able to make it. (We don't play with missing players. This is not the point of the thread though). So... we thought of maybe playing a one-shot.

We've never ran one-shot sessions, and though I've read few ideas here and there, I was wondering if anyone had a good experience/ idea for one? Or any tips on running such sessions?

A few details about our gaming group:
1. As a one shot, I'd like it to be something a bit different, something not your regular run-of-the-mill.
2. Our group mainly has experience with 3.5, PF, A bit of Shadowrun, and a bit of Fate Core. (Though we had trouble getting into the mindset of the last). We're thinking perhaps trying Fate again, but also considering PF, for a quick scenario, levels about 5-6.
3. Our group greatly enjoys tough challenges, being creative, and a lot of inter-party dynamics.
4. We've mainly played in fantasy setting (Either homebrew, Eberron or Golarion, though very "light tone" in each). Mostly sort of epic and/ or brutal adventure.
5. We're also considering trying out new systems/ approaches/ games, but due to the short time, they need to be very simple. (Perhaps variations of regular systems?)
6. Time frame: Our sessions usually last about 8 hours (+/- an hour or two).

A few ideas I've considered:
1. A sort of a "Seven samurai" scenario- the group play competent adventurers, tasked protecting a village/ castle/ monastery/ other local, against a vastly superior enemy (In terms of sheer numbers. Most opponents are weaker). Focuses on battle, preparation, and with a high lethality rate. Can they actually succeed?

2. Zombie breakdown! The characters re part of a small town, where a zombie outbreak begin. Can they survive the night? (Possibly in a small local/ contained one. They need to find a way to escape?) Focuses on panicked frenzy of mostly regular folks, against the supernatural.

3. The "disgruntled minions" game: A combination of lots of humor, with a need for ingenious creativity. The characters are monstrous races, whose ancestors made a deal with adventurers, stole and gave them the McGuffin, in return for claiming the dungeon has been vanquished, and leaving them alone to live peacefully... At least, until the dragoness came- She is immensely powerful, yet a bit dimwitted, and is VERY much a traditionalist. So she seeks to subjugate the lands, and gain notoriety, yet she's also lazy, and demands her subjects (The PCs) to do so. She'll ask vastly unreasonable demands, and will eat them all if they don't do it.

4. Horror/ mystery game: The players find themselves in some local (Carnival/ hotel/ abandoned house) and creepy strange things begin happening. They need to solve this, while also avoid gruesome horrible fates. It's a very skeletal idea, and I don't have any specific details in mind yet though.

5. Hotel Califronia game: An idea I once saw on the GiTP (By Admiral Squid I think?) About running a single session based on the song. Basically, the players re all visitors to sort of secluded guesthouse, and the rest is also horror/ mystery, only according to the song's lyrics... Sort of... (When at the end you play it of course...)

Anyone else has any cool ideas? Any comments about running one shots? I'd be quite grateful! :smallsmile:

Garimeth
2016-10-03, 10:19 AM
Guy, Alon, Adam, Tomer, Uri- If you're reading this, please don't continue. It will spoil the game. :smalltongue:

Hey there! Our regular play group is pausing the regular play due to one player not being able to make it. (We don't play with missing players. This is not the point of the thread though). So... we thought of maybe playing a one-shot.

We've never ran one-shot sessions, and though I've read few ideas here and there, I was wondering if anyone had a good experience/ idea for one? Or any tips on running such sessions?

A few details about our gaming group:
1. As a one shot, I'd like it to be something a bit different, something not your regular run-of-the-mill.
2. Our group mainly has experience with 3.5, PF, A bit of Shadowrun, and a bit of Fate Core. (Though we had trouble getting into the mindset of the last). We're thinking perhaps trying Fate again, but also considering PF, for a quick scenario, levels about 5-6.
3. Our group greatly enjoys tough challenges, being creative, and a lot of inter-party dynamics.
4. We've mainly played in fantasy setting (Either homebrew, Eberron or Golarion, though very "light tone" in each). Mostly sort of epic and/ or brutal adventure.
5. We're also considering trying out new systems/ approaches/ games, but due to the short time, they need to be very simple. (Perhaps variations of regular systems?)
6. Time frame: Our sessions usually last about 8 hours (+/- an hour or two).

A few ideas I've considered:
1. A sort of a "Seven samurai" scenario- the group play competent adventurers, tasked protecting a village/ castle/ monastery/ other local, against a vastly superior enemy (In terms of sheer numbers. Most opponents are weaker). Focuses on battle, preparation, and with a high lethality rate. Can they actually succeed?

2. Zombie breakdown! The characters re part of a small town, where a zombie outbreak begin. Can they survive the night? (Possibly in a small local/ contained one. They need to find a way to escape?) Focuses on panicked frenzy of mostly regular folks, against the supernatural.

3. The "disgruntled minions" game: A combination of lots of humor, with a need for ingenious creativity. The characters are monstrous races, whose ancestors made a deal with adventurers, stole and gave them the McGuffin, in return for claiming the dungeon has been vanquished, and leaving them alone to live peacefully... At least, until the dragoness came- She is immensely powerful, yet a bit dimwitted, and is VERY much a traditionalist. So she seeks to subjugate the lands, and gain notoriety, yet she's also lazy, and demands her subjects (The PCs) to do so. She'll ask vastly unreasonable demands, and will eat them all if they don't do it.

4. Horror/ mystery game: The players find themselves in some local (Carnival/ hotel/ abandoned house) and creepy strange things begin happening. They need to solve this, while also avoid gruesome horrible fates. It's a very skeletal idea, and I don't have any specific details in mind yet though.

5. Hotel Califronia game: An idea I once saw on the GiTP (By Admiral Squid I think?) About running a single session based on the song. Basically, the players re all visitors to sort of secluded guesthouse, and the rest is also horror/ mystery, only according to the song's lyrics... Sort of... (When at the end you play it of course...)

Anyone else has any cool ideas? Any comments about running one shots? I'd be quite grateful! :smallsmile:

Those are all cool, and also you can never go wrong with a old fashioned dungeon crawl - ESPECIALLY if your group rarely does them. I'd have everyone show up with their characters made or have pregens.

I've run a few one shots with my group, and what I will do is have them make a new character that exists in the same world/time as the main party, but in a different area or dealing with other things the party never ran down or didn't have time for. This lets them try a new character in the same setting, as well as flesh out their current game more. I've had pretty positive reception to it.

Fri
2016-10-03, 10:21 AM
The Orc and The Pie (https://gist.github.com/kerrizor/4165372)

Geddy2112
2016-10-03, 10:28 AM
I like one shots that let you use all that situational magic/equipment/rulings that never come up.

Like an entire session where the party is underwater-they were hired to go find a sunken ship and get the treasure X from it. Bust out the waterbreathing, swim speeds, aquatic races, fish familiars, shark companions, etc.Or maybe the entire adventure is on a snowy cold mountain, like getting to the top of everest. Or perhaps the entire thing takes place on the plane of air-subjective gravity, fly everywhere, etc.

Another good one is the boss monster-the party is actually a bunch of evil monsters or your other dungeon stock(gelatinous cube, vampire, etc) and they have to defeat the heroic adventurers attacking the dungeon.

I have done zombie outbreak at my table-added twist, you use a system with rules for modern tech(guns, cars, computers) but not sci fi, and you make the players play themselves, the location is the current city/state/country where you all are, the time is the present, and the zombie outbreak happens after a weekly gaming session. Fate supports this really well, but you can do it in PF.

Cernor
2016-10-03, 11:17 AM
It's a bit left-field, but if you want to play a horror game in a new system, look no further than Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf. It's more tongue-in-cheek horror than true horror, but it's a blast to play.

The rules can be found here: https://m.reddit.com/r/ACSLB/comments/3c3eg9/rules_pdf_actual_cannibal_shia_labeouf_v07b/

Ezeze
2016-10-03, 04:44 PM
For one-shot games I, personally, almost always go with Paranoia.

Character creation is a few die rolls and a pun-y name, the 'bad guys' are mostly the other players... Once they figure out that killing eachother has been incentivized it's almost impossible to get them to stop! :smalltongue:

Algeh
2016-10-03, 06:53 PM
One thing I've wanted to do for a one-shot would be for everyone to come with a character made already, then swap them around so everyone is playing a character built by someone else. Some of my players tend to get into ruts of designing and playing similar characters each time, and a one-shot can be a good chance to try something new since there's no long term investment. I don't know if that would work well for your group or not, though. (I'd definitely warn them before they made the characters so they wouldn't get too attached to them before trading.)

That doesn't help with what to do for the actual session, though. I'm also a fan of dungeon crawls as one-shots, because you can design them to have certain sections that do or don't exist depending on how much time you have left in the session in ways that are often not obvious to the players, thus making it more possible to end the game on some sort of conclusion.

Antioch
2016-10-04, 11:50 AM
A team of professional whatevers, probably affiliated with the underdog organization. Assassins or problem-solvers funded by a rebellion or rival nation performing a one-shot job to neutralize some political objective or another.

The catch? The higher-ups' intelligence suggests there's a traitor in their midst, someone who's intent on sabotaging the party at a crucial moment or otherwise preventing them from completing the task.

Go about the table and whisper to each player whether they're the traitor or not.

Do not actually assign any player the role of traitor.

Watch them tear each other to pieces out of paranoia, or scrape enough trust together to get the job done.

Kol Korran
2016-10-14, 02:49 AM
Thanks for the ideas everyone!

We decided to go with FATE core it seems, in a modern-day "end of the world" type of scenario. I quite liked the idea that Geddy 2112 proposed about the players playing themselves, in the modern setting, with the starting scene being right at the D&D table.

I like the idea, but I have a few issues to ponder:
1. Designing their characters:
I though of a few options:
- I build their characters (Which are supposed to represent them). This gives the advantage of surprise, but I'm worried it might offend people, or get them wrong. (On the whole most people don't take themselves seriously, but this may be a bit personal?)
- Letting them build themselves: Ruins the surprise, but they depict themselves. Yet... not everyone sees themselves as others do, and I'm worried this may cause the same problems.
- Letting the other players build them, yet the above concerns apply, only a bit differently.

2. End of the world?
What sort of an "end of the world?" It need to fit a one shot, be very fast paced,and hopefully entertaining? Some ideas:
- Zombie outbreak? An oldie but a goodie (And we've never done such a thing), yet my players don't much know this genre.
- The nukes go off! But... I find it hard to put that into play.
- Global warming! High tide! Run for the mountains! Yet a bit boring, other than fighting your neighbours...
- The monsters are coming back! Something on the lines of the themes in The Last Halloween comic (https://www.last-halloween.com/posts/1). This seems the best idea yet (Incorporates horror, weird monsters and chaos), but I'm unsure of where to go with it yet... Also, not quite "modern day"?

Any other ideas?

Psikerlord
2016-10-14, 04:16 AM
You might try Tomb of Horutep (free PDF: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=645444 ) with Low Fantasy Gaming (free PDF: https://lowfantasygaming.com/ )

Looking at your gaming history, LFG would be fairly different to your usual games: it has an OSR base, very flexible improvised combat options, dark & dangerous magic, and no "encounters by level" (instead, it has a formal party retreat/improv chase rules). And Tomb would probably run about 8 hours.

DeltaK
2016-10-17, 08:43 AM
I've had an idea in the past for a fun little side game that could be done as a one shot, either with new or even their current characters. It primarily depends on how big of video gamers your players are.

Basically their characters get sucked into a strange portal, and it takes them to a video game universe. They hang out in the first game for a little while, maybe fighting some enemies or solving a puzzle, and then after 1-2 encounters or puzzles in this world, the crazy portal whisks them away to another video game. You can even have physics change based on where they get sent. If you have the preparation time, you can make custom monsters that are based on the video game monsters. In 8 hours you can probably jump to 5-10 different video games. And some of the fun could be trying to make it obscure, and have them try to figure out OOC what game they're in. Some examples include: Super Mario World (they get stuck moving in 2-dimensions, maybe even moving only to the right), Half-life (the first game's alien world where it is all low-gravity jumping puzzles), Pokemon (they have to fight evil mutated versions of pokemon), etc.

It doesn't even have to be video games. Are there TV shows (Walking Dead, Battlestar, Star Wars) or books (LOTR, GOT) or even other tabletop games (Warhammer) that everyone in your group enjoy? Add them to the random world jumping.


This would of course be pretty silly, not all that serious, but it can definitely be fun for a one shot's worth.

NRSASD
2016-10-17, 09:19 AM
Here's a few more end-of-the-world scenarios for you:

Alien Invasion: Your party is sitting around the table when a brilliant light illuminates the sky, followed by a tremendous boom. Very quickly, all the news outlets start reporting an alien invasion, and things go out of control from there. These aliens could be more bestial like in Alien or Attack the Block, or more sophisticated. There could be just one breed of alien, or a whole slew of species like in Halo or XCOM. The objective: make it out of the city to the evacuation point, or possibly, figure out why the aliens are here and how to stop them.

Celtic Halloween/Samhain Modern day Halloween was greatly inspired by a much older Celtic holiday known as Samhain. On this day, the boundaries between the worlds get awfully fuzzy, and Sidhe, monsters, and humans alike can all encounter one another. Your party accidentally crosses one of these lines and is now trapped in a hostile dimension, where they have only one day to escape back home, lest they be stuck there forever.

The Storm to End All Storms A category 5 hurricane has suddenly and inexplicably appeared offshore and is going to make landfall in 4 hours. Build sandbag walls, board up windows, plan escape routes, and lay in supplies because once the power goes out it's going to get rough. Wait a moment... who opened the front door? Who tore apart those sandbags? Something's out there in the storm, and it wants IN.

Look at that cute puppy! Your party is walking home down the street when suddenly an adorable, lost puppy/kitten/animal shows up and begs to be played with. After much frolicking and fun it runs off, and shortly afterwards the police turn up looking for this lost pet. Don't worry, it's nothing dangerous or suspicious, we're just doing our jobs by pursuing lost pets across the city for no apparent reason. Said pet shows up at the party's house and refuses to leave their side, and meanwhile the police (eventually the army) get more and more aggressive looking for it. What on earth is going on?

gkathellar
2016-10-17, 09:34 AM
A friend of mine uses the Random Card button on the Gatherer (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx) for this. 2-5 cards can provide you with ideas for a one-shot, an adventure, or even a whole campaign.

For instance, I draw Raise Dead (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=416903), Shyft (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=2532), Godless Shrine (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=96935), and Keeper of the Lens (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=394606). The adventure: undead, magically disguised as the living, are being used to infiltrate society and then let loose to attack from out of nowhere. The party has to recover a magical lens to identify the undead and track them to their source - a corrupted shrine that blends healing magic with the foulest necromancy.