Need suggestions for a one shot campaign.

[Bonzai]

I had a long time player group that fell apart several years ago. In a couple months one of the players will be coming back to town and I would like to put together a psuedo reunion and run a one shot 3.5 campaign that should be completed within 4 to 5 hours. I will DM, there will be two returning veteran players, one players fiance who has gaming experience, and my wife. My wife has never played before, but is curious, loves various fantasy genres, has a competative streak, and already gets along well with everyone involved.

I have a few goals in mind. First I want to get a good chunk of the gang back together again after we have gone our seperate ways and not regularly gamed in a long time. I would also love to to create a great first gaming experience for my wife, and hopefully get her interested in playing more. I want a good balance of role play to roll play as I think the ladies would be all about the social interactions, and the veteran players would be fine with that as well. It needs to be self contained and able to wrap it's self up in one session as I can't count on getting a second night of play in.

As a DM, I usually write my own campaigns and they span from lvl 1 to low epic levels, so its a little out of my wheel house. So I would like to ask for some advice. Are there some pre-existing moduals that might be a good fit? I am open to suggestions. Otherwise I was thinking of a low level night of the living dead zombie apocalypse style scenario, as my wife would enjoy it.

What level range should I shoot for? I don't want to over whelm the newer players with options, but at the same time I want to allow room for creativity.

Any other advise would be appreciated!

[RNightstalker]

Wizards put out plenty of "short adventures" that would feature some material from one of the new rulebook releases.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Bonzai
What level range should I shoot for?

Given that your wife is completely new to 3.5, I would run this at levels 2-3. That gives the PCs enough options to be interesting, and enough hit points to have a better chance of surviving the night, without having too much to keep track of for the new players.

If you want a combination of action and social encounters, you might check out Crownfall (https://www.amazon.com/Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-Crownfall-Crown/dp/1640780157/), which is the first chapter in the War for the Crown adventure path. This is Pathfinder rather than 3.5, but the systems easily mesh together, and Crownfall gives you a great setup for social interaction as well as straight-up combat. You might not be able to fit the entire thing into one night, but it has the benefit of kicking off a broader storyline if you want to tempt your players into gaming more often.

If that sounds a little too much for one night, you might check out some of the World of Prime modules by M.C. Planck, who posts here in the Playground as Yahzi Coyote. He has a custom campaign world with a cool central concept—XP as a physical resource that the PCs harvest from their defeated foes—but you don’t need to incorporate that to use his modules. Check out his items here (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=&x=0&y=0&author=planck&artist=&pfrom=&pto=), and take a look at his ongoing campaign journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?544396-World-of-Prime-Campaign-Journal-1).

Also, as RNight mentioned, Wizards put out a whole series of free modules back in the day, but those aren’t easy to find these days and it can take a lot of wading through to find one that’s exactly what you need. I’m not even sure if any of them are available anymore, but someone else might be along to post a link.

[Bonzai]

I appreciate the advice guys! I think I have the old 3.5 short adventures downloaded some where. I will look over them as well as the links provided.

Thanks!

[Palanan]

Good luck, and be sure to let us know how it goes.