Comments on: The one-shot session success formula

By: Mountzionryan

Mountzionryan — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:47:03 +0000

My advice for one-shots is this:
Take your favorite action movie, knead it until it is no longer obvious. Throw in a few twists that aren’t in the movie. There’s your set-up.

The best one-shot I’ve ever played in was about a group of geeky kids in the 80s who found a pirate map and went looking for the treasure. Turned out the greedy college professor was stealing the treasure. {Goonies+Scooby-Doo=Awesome night of gaming]

The second bit of advice I give is to plan about 5 scenes with the expectation that you’ll get to do 4. Make three of them the key scenes and the other two non-necessary complications.

By: Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2009-10-16

Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2009-10-16 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:46:31 +0000

[...] The one-shot session success formula Last weekend, I ran a one-shot Paranoia game. I needed Yax’s advice, but it came a few days too late for me to learn from. I think my one-short went fairly well, but I could have done better with the advice he gives out. If you’re planning on a one-shot adventure for your group, check out what Yax has to say on the Dungeon Mastering web site. [...]

By: Gnome Rodeo: I Like Big Hats and I Cannot Lie - Gnome Stew, the Game Mastering Blog

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:13:50 +0000

[...] Mastering: The one-shot session success formula (item #1: isolation) is excellent, as is Big Bad Good Guy… Wait, What? — think of an [...]

By: Yax

Yax — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:03:45 +0000

@ColoQ: Yep. Time is my problem too. I miss college. It’s hard to believe that I’ve had weeks of 5 games in 7 days (4-6 hour games!)

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:09:48 +0000

I find campaigns lock me in too much to a certain character or group of players. I want to focus on one-shots (possibly connected, possibly not) from here on out, so thanks for this advice.

By: John L. Williams

John L. Williams — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:58:23 +0000

I have never really had much luck with one shot games, so this advice is really helpful. Thanks.

By: Tyson J. Hayes

Tyson J. Hayes — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:31:19 +0000

I think the time limit is important to getting the one shot off, some friends of mine and I in high school had 20 minutes to game every day (during lunch). As the school didn’t allow us to have dice (it was thought of as gambling) we had to take the DM at his word that he was being fair. Although arguments still happened they were fair less of an issue as they were in the spirit of the game, and would give the DM a chance to eat his sandwich.

I’ve got a Halloween party I’m hosting coming up and my use a variation on the Zombie Murder Mystery to use.

By: ColoQ

ColoQ — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:47:58 +0000

As I’ve grown older, I have had less and less time to do full-on campaigns. The one-shot or mini campaigns I tend to run these days have become integral to me actually getting to game.

In these games, I find that it becomes necessary to communicate some small ground rules about party interaction. I basically say “I encourage role-playing and I encourage creativity. But, please remember we have a small amount of real-world time to accomplish this story, and unnecessary inter-party arguments can take a long time.”

I also find that it becomes necessary to ask the players to focus during combat more in a one-shot than in a long-running campaign. Requesting to have players have an action ready the moment it is their turn to act is key to keeping the action bits as snappy as possible.

All of this gets incorporated in a “housekeeping” segment at the beginning of the day. I think I’ll add your lines about building a story together, Yax. Great wording succinct and to the point.