PDA

View Full Version : Looking for a One-Off Game Setting



shakes019
2007-12-12, 05:50 PM
I am putting together a small gaming group, and it's been several years since any of us played D&D, and some of the group haven't ever played 3.0 or 3.5.

What I want to do is get them together, make up characters, and then run them through a short "practice" adventure, before we move on to the campaign. Can anyone recommend a quick primer adventure that will only take a couple of hours to play through?

TheLogman
2007-12-12, 05:53 PM
Tomb of Horrors (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051031a) technically doesn't take long to play...but it doesn't have much combat.

As for published stuff, I really don't know, but the DMG has some tables you can roll up that give random monsters, dungeon paths, doors, and all the trimmings. A simple path with a few keys and some Gnolls should be pretty easy, and would introduce them to combat, skills, and dungeons in general.

-Cor-
2007-12-12, 06:07 PM
The DMG actually has a full on sample dungeon crawl in it. Not bad.

I like to do a battle room scenario in this situation instead of an actual small campaign. Just have a 60x60 room, about 10 CR4 encounters with various terrains, and 4 4th level players.

Should cover most of the more common combat scenarios that come up. Charging/Bull Rush/Cover/Concealment/Line of Effect/Line of Sight/Grapple/Overrun/Tripping/Status Conditions are all things to think about when designing the encounters.

Prometheus
2007-12-12, 06:25 PM
<stolen from Dark Sun>Take -Cor-'s example, and have the fluff rational be that you are all prisoners who are forced to fight in a Gladiator's ring. For a grand finale, set up the conditions between fights so that the players make an escape attempt as their final challenge.</stolen from Dark Sun>

Human Paragon 3
2007-12-12, 11:45 PM
I played a one-off once where we were pulled together by a malfunctioning artifact in an abandoned wizard's tower. We had to get to the top of the tower and repair the artifact to be returned to our own times and planes. It was fun seeing what happened to all of the archmage's devices and experiments once he was out of the picture.

RTGoodman
2007-12-13, 12:54 AM
The Wizards of the Coast website has a whole list of original adventures (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20030530b), and some of them could work. From that list, "A Dark and Stormy Knight" and "Something's Cooking" are both pretty good.

If you can find it, the printed adventure "Scourge of the Howling Horde" is a good one.