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sengmeng
2018-05-15, 11:53 PM
I'm planning to host a one-shot in an original system, 2-3 players, based loosely on D&D setting-wise but with a heavy Norse mythology influence. Anything that would work in a low magic 3.5 game can be reasonably adapted. I'd especially like to hear about ones you've actually done and how they went.

Couatl
2018-05-16, 03:39 AM
My one-shots tend to become two- and event three-shots, but here is one I managed to pull long ago:

A blind monk who lives in a lonely shrine in the middle of the city park has gone missing. The monk was famous for his good singing skills. Later my players found that a local undead fighter had kidnapped him so he could sing for one last time to the ghosts in a ruined castle nearby so they can be released and find peace, but he had to do this in several consecutive nights and the singing with ghosts took its toll on him, slowly maddening and turning him into undead himself.

Cespenar
2018-05-16, 05:26 AM
I like one-shots played as different characters/perspectives in an ongoing/finished campaign. Serves as world-building as well as taking advantage of an established and already invested plot. For example we had a one-shot where we played as the henchmen of the setting's villain, which was pretty fun.

For a standalone one-shot, the introduction and pacing are pretty important. You might even consider doing the introduction beforehand, sending the players some summaries about the predicament and establishing how they met, etc. so that you won't waste time with it during the session.

Knaight
2018-05-16, 10:15 AM
As I've mentioned before, my current gaming is basically all in the context of a one shot club I made. We jump between systems, settings, and genres a lot, so there's a fair amount of pulp, horror, sci-fi, etc. that wouldn't be usable to you. That said, there have been a few fantasy games, with varying degrees of high magic. Notably:

A group of people are thrown through a portal to what is basically fantasy Australia (in the sense of a prison continent which already had a native population) before having their memories forcibly wiped, minus the memories of the wiping. The one shot was about figuring out who they were, discovering that there was a spring that would bring back their memories, and finding out at the spring that while they were all common enemies of the empire that hurled them through the portal they were very much not friends - the bandit queen and peasant rebel leader had personal hostile history, as did the enemy general and the deposed heir.

Some retired soldiers and similar are in a small village, in the midst of severe famine. Raiders from another nearby village raid their granary, and the situation continues to deteriorate from there. The specifics of how this deterioration happen can vary, the point of that one shot was an exploration of desperation, of choosing between bad options, etc. I wouldn't use this as inspiration unless you're specifically going for unrelentingly bleak.

A tribe leader has gone missing, presumed dead. The PCs are tasked with recovering them or their corpse, and bringing them back to the tribe. Worse, what little is known of the direction they vanished suggests that they were in a large complex of old ruins constantly being picked over, where even finding information about them involves prodding a delicate web of hidden information between groups with extreme tensions between them.

All of these went fairly well, though not necessarily as planned.

sengmeng
2018-05-16, 10:49 AM
As I've mentioned before, my current gaming is basically all in the context of a one shot club I made. We jump between systems, settings, and genres a lot, so there's a fair amount of pulp, horror, sci-fi, etc. that wouldn't be usable to you. That said, there have been a few fantasy games, with varying degrees of high magic. Notably:

A group of people are thrown through a portal to what is basically fantasy Australia (in the sense of a prison continent which already had a native population) before having their memories forcibly wiped, minus the memories of the wiping. The one shot was about figuring out who they were, discovering that there was a spring that would bring back their memories, and finding out at the spring that while they were all common enemies of the empire that hurled them through the portal they were very much not friends - the bandit queen and peasant rebel leader had personal hostile history, as did the enemy general and the deposed heir.

Some retired soldiers and similar are in a small village, in the midst of severe famine. Raiders from another nearby village raid their granary, and the situation continues to deteriorate from there. The specifics of how this deterioration happen can vary, the point of that one shot was an exploration of desperation, of choosing between bad options, etc. I wouldn't use this as inspiration unless you're specifically going for unrelentingly bleak.

A tribe leader has gone missing, presumed dead. The PCs are tasked with recovering them or their corpse, and bringing them back to the tribe. Worse, what little is known of the direction they vanished suggests that they were in a large complex of old ruins constantly being picked over, where even finding information about them involves prodding a delicate web of hidden information between groups with extreme tensions between them.

All of these went fairly well, though not necessarily as planned.

Unrelentingly bleak works well in my setting; it's basically set after Ragnarok in the continent-sized crater of a supervolcano where the only way to survive the worse-than arctic winters is to huddle next to the geothermal hotspots. Famine isn't so much of an issue as the scarcity of good winter hideouts, though. I like the idea of investigating the death of a tribal leader; racial/national tensions will be high in the setting, so the typically diverse adventuring group could make sense if they were a team with multinational representation trying to conduct an investigation that may shatter the fragile peace.

BBQ Pork
2018-05-16, 12:27 PM
A one-shot I ran:
The PCs are on their way to a small village that is known for hospitality at Winter's Feast. They are attacked by horse-sized Dire Wolves on the road. The wolves seek to pull lightweight characters off of their horses, drag them a couple hundred yards. If successful, the wolves snatch up any dropped weapons (dex checks are made by dragged PCs) and retreat. If necessary, the Pack Master (1/2 Orc Feral Child "Gregg" turned Ranger), rides in, with a polearm.
It's a raid to harass and steal gear.

The PCs get to town a little bloodied, but okay. The at the Inn, everyone knows about Gregg. "Gregg's a <expletive>!" They may shout in unison at the Inn.

At Feast's Eve, watchmen will sound the alarm that many acts of vandalism have been done, and that a small child has gone missing. Every year, Gregg vandalizes stuff and his dire wolves kill livestock, but he never kidnaps.

It's up to the PCs to find his lair and rescue the child.

It's also a straight up rip-o...., er, I mean "Homage" of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas ".


My group had 2 people who could track, but none who could detect traps. In the Gregg's lair, the Fighter went first into the mountaintop lair, fell through a chute covered with a rug and ended up in the town dump, while the party fought Gregg and his pack.

The child was safe with the "big doggies ".

Knaight
2018-05-17, 12:21 AM
I like the idea of investigating the death of a tribal leader; racial/national tensions will be high in the setting, so the typically diverse adventuring group could make sense if they were a team with multinational representation trying to conduct an investigation that may shatter the fragile peace.

One of the upsides of one shots is that you don't need to build for the typical adventuring group, as the characters don't need to be the same from one shot to one shot. In the context of that game, everyone just had to be from the same tribe (though there was one outsider who had been effectively adopted in).

sengmeng
2018-05-17, 02:44 AM
One of the upsides of one shots is that you don't need to build for the typical adventuring group, as the characters don't need to be the same from one shot to one shot. In the context of that game, everyone just had to be from the same tribe (though there was one outsider who had been effectively adopted in).

That's a good point, but this is also the debut of the rule set and setting; I'm not going to put my players in a world with giant talking squirrels as a PC race and then tell them they have to all be humans.

Knaight
2018-05-17, 10:24 AM
That's a good point, but this is also the debut of the rule set and setting; I'm not going to put my players in a world with giant talking squirrels as a PC race and then tell them they have to all be humans.

Are you only doing one one shot total? If you're doing multiple in this same setting, this becomes a much smaller issue - one session is members of a human tribe trying to find their probably dead leader, the next giant talking squirrels on the world tree pursuing a fabled fruit.

sengmeng
2018-05-17, 10:34 AM
Are you only doing one one shot total? If you're doing multiple in this same setting, this becomes a much smaller issue - one session is members of a human tribe trying to find their probably dead leader, the next giant talking squirrels on the world tree pursuing a fabled fruit.

So far it's all that's on the table; I'll only be in town one day. I'm glad you made the connection between squirrels and Norse mythology though:smallsmile:

Knaight
2018-05-17, 11:13 AM
So far it's all that's on the table; I'll only be in town one day. I'm glad you made the connection between squirrels and Norse mythology though:smallsmile:

That changes things a bit - I'd still suggest going for fairly normal characters, but a single session setting showcase is a special sort of one shot. Here you're probably best off with a voyage into the unknown, from the normal to the weird, across a decent chunk of setting. The recovery of a tribal leader's body still works for that (given that you seem to like that concept), but it's worth keeping the idea of a voyage into the unknown in mind.

sengmeng
2018-05-17, 04:34 PM
That changes things a bit - I'd still suggest going for fairly normal characters, but a single session setting showcase is a special sort of one shot. Here you're probably best off with a voyage into the unknown, from the normal to the weird, across a decent chunk of setting. The recovery of a tribal leader's body still works for that (given that you seem to like that concept), but it's worth keeping the idea of a voyage into the unknown in mind.

I do have some ideas along those lines... an ancient artifact weapon washes up on the beach in the wreckage of a burnt ship (Viking-style funeral ship). It turns into a situation where one group wants to bring it to their holy men, but other races/nations demand they have a say in its fate, and while they are safeguarding it for transport, a tribal leader is killed, seemingly by a clawed animal. The party tries to decide where to take the artifact while investigating whether the death was a murder or not (three of the setting's races have claws, and there's a beast-cult with metal claws as part of their ceremonial garb).

LunarDrop
2018-05-17, 11:03 PM
I'm running one next week that has the party being asked by a farmer to bring back his escaped prize pig, Mr. Porksalot.

However, Mr. Porksalot has an apparent death wish as his tracks first lead through a sleeping goblin camp (he ate all their food while they were asleep, the party can try to stealth through but if they fail the goblins will wake and assume the party are the ones who trashed their camp and will attack because they, obviously, are not going to believe the party when they say it was a pig), an alligator-infested swamp (conflict the party will have here should be obvious), an art gallery (where it left muddy tracks and the staff will get angry at the party, thinking their hooved party member made the mess, forcing them to clean up. Because, again, they won't believe the party's claims that a pig just meandered through here unnoticed), a meat processing plant (seriously, do you think the staff will believe you are looking for your pig? They aren't letting you in), and, finally, in a quarry where it is being prepped as a sacrifice for a cult.