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Incorrect
2020-09-04, 06:54 AM
Hi everyone.
I have been asked to run some one shot adventures, for a changing group of people.
For my personal enjoyment, and for the benefit of the repeat players, I would like to have the scenarios loosely tied together.

Players: Will change from session to session, with some playing more often than others. I will simply play with the first 4-6 players that sign up.
System: I guess D&D5E or something light, like Fate Accelerated.

My own ideas:
A town. Every character is in the same location, and the scenarios are tied together by the surroundings and the npcs.
or
A theme. Every scenario is tied to the same theme. I was thinking something along the lines of "The end of the world" and have repeat players witness a slow build towards a cataclysmic event.

Do you have any experience with something like this? Or maybe a great idea that you are willing to share?

Spriteless
2020-09-04, 09:55 AM
Town adventures... Well, there's always a murder mystery. Given D&D has some supernatural as natural, there are plenty of twists on it. The murderer wears a disguise as a monster, as much because the dead can be spoke to as because of other witnesses. Or the body was hidden. There's ghoooooosts! o_o Or worse, someone who seals away souls so there are no ghosts! x_x

Most adventures start in town. My family heirloom was stolen by [dungeon creatures], please get it back for a fee. Yeah any dungeon map will do. If your PCs actually look at the heirloom, it has something to do with the apocalypse cult, and in bringing it back they are helping along the long term plot. Oh, guess this one should go before the first one, especially if the heirloom ends up being the murder weapon or something.

[Dungeon creatures] have burnt down the local gardens of magic herbs the lord keeps. Well, at least no one was killed. Plus, this is an opportunity for commerce. NPC merchant, who may have appeared in earlier adventures selling wares or appraising treasures, wants to go to the city to buy some of these magic herbs, and any PC with the guild artisan or something else that sounds mercantile is the perfect business partner for this venture. Great profits await, if you can survive the ambushes! (The herbs can be used for healing magic, or less savory magic as well.)

Eventually, [dungeon creatures] are desperate enough to go to war with the town, and you've got a seige on hand. PCs have to help set up defences. But wait, 1/3 of the way into the allotted adventure time, something scary happens in the middle of town, how do the players deal?

Huh, just read that you said either town or apocalypse, not necesarily both.

firelistener
2020-09-04, 10:37 AM
Sounds exactly like a "West Marches" style campaign. It's a common term for the type of game setting and rotating players you described, so searching that term might turn up a lot of good stuff for you.

I have my own West Marches setting, which is a frontier region that has magical stone towers scattered across the region. Each one is a themed dungeon with a short puzzle or challenge to get inside the tower. Once inside, the climbs to the top and gets some treasure. It's super easy to recycle and make level-appropriate combat encounters.

Some of the adventures so far:
Get a key from a monster at the bottom of the lake, then enter the nearby tower. The tower has a water theme with some puzzles that involve filling big buckets to progress.

Desert tower is hidden by shifting dunes and a sandstorm. Supposedly you can buy a special compass to find it from a shady merchant in town. The tower itself was just a normal dungeon with level-appropriate monsters that time.

A tower by the sea is guarded by a hungry dragon that will let adventurers enter if they give him a special tasty magic fish that can be caught nearby. They can either fight the dragon (and probably die), catch the fish themselves, or find a legendary fisherman and get him to catch it for them by finding his lost Ersatz Eye in a cave where a monster lives. Once in the tower, it's just regular dungeon stuff.

Myth27
2020-09-04, 04:55 PM
Hi everyone.
I have been asked to run some one shot adventures, for a changing group of people.
For my personal enjoyment, and for the benefit of the repeat players, I would like to have the scenarios loosely tied together.

Players: Will change from session to session, with some playing more often than others. I will simply play with the first 4-6 players that sign up.
System: I guess D&D5E or something light, like Fate Accelerated.

My own ideas:
A town. Every character is in the same location, and the scenarios are tied together by the surroundings and the npcs.
or
A theme. Every scenario is tied to the same theme. I was thinking something along the lines of "The end of the world" and have repeat players witness a slow build towards a cataclysmic event.

Do you have any experience with something like this? Or maybe a great idea that you are willing to share?

I did it once, the setting was the real word where magic appeared out of nowhere 6 months prior, so a a few people got magical powers including the pcs, so every session there was a magic related mystery to solve with someone using their power for evil that had to be defeated by the pcs and with every case they gained some info to why magic appeared so there was a bigger plot about finding out the origin of magic but every week there was a subplot about a single event

EdokTheTwitch
2020-09-07, 03:47 PM
I have a concept that might work here.

Basically, whenever my group and I are not all there, we play a "Witcher contract" game. I made 12 characters, all belonging to one order of adventurers (E6 for D&D 3.5, but that's not really relevant), and all players that are present roll a d12 to see who they play. Each character has their own gear, playstyle, and background.

After the characters are chosen,I pick a random monster form the Monster Manual, and build a story around it terrorizing a village/town, and say the players are contracted to solve the problem however they can. Sometimes the monster is a single creature, sometimes a gang, and sometimes the monster is not even there.

Always turns out to be a fun session, especially as it gives me an opportunity to playtest random ideas.