How to run a D&D One Shot in ONE SESSION 

That's some really quality content from a very small channel. You just gained a new subscriber.

Super solid advice front to back! I especially appreciate the suggestion of having doors already opened and freely explaining to the players what they see. I feel like I've added so many unintentional red-herrings to sessions I've run by making mundane pieces feel unnecessarily mysterious.

I've watched about 4 or 5 of Power Word Spill's videos despite only barely getting into DnD recently. Only now have I realised the size of this channel is criminally small compared to the quality and value of this content. Amazing work and thank you for your effort.

This feels like a personal attack

Dude, you’re criminally under-appreciated. Great channel.

Really solid advice, wish I had seen this video a couple of years ago. The quality of the production is nice. Another thing that helps keeping one shots being one shots is the ability to move the players forward, like when they are stuck on some element, have something else happen that drives the plot forward, i.e. an NPC approach the party and gives relevant information or guides them to the next "scene", or they see a magic flash in the distance. Also it is important to be able to adapt and change things around, for example the NPC that the party is talking doesn't have anything useful to say, well either cut that NPC from the story, or give them the important piece of information the players are looking for. Does the shopkeeper have connections to the black market? Well now he has. Anyway i rambled on quite much.

Subbed! Great tips. I laughed way too hard at the intro! I can't stress enough how important the nº of encounters thing is. Encounters are ANYTHING that implies the players do stuff, not just combat. Once you get into this mindset you'll be much better at estimating the actual time it will take to clear an adventure.

Definitely need to get the players onboard, and them having no illusions about the type of adventure

I remember my first one-shot. Did a branched adventure with alternate routes. It took 9 hours, my brain was fried after that! We usually do about 6h sessions. 3 players, started at the city square the evening before the event. They RP'd for 2 hours and talked to 25 NPC's before going to bed, then when in the dungeon they avoided as much as they possibly could. It was rough.

Honestly your content is amazing. I just found you and have loved listening to your takes. I also love that it isn’t chaotic and jumpy while providing in depth insight in a pretty short video format. 👍👍

Great video, look forward to this channel growing

You rock, dude! Great advice. Thanks!

I was watching your new video and just looked at how small your channel is! I really like your work and the information you deliver. Deffility going to be a regular, and I'll share you page where I can ^^

Great vid! I'm just starting out on D&D so this is extremely useful.

Great advice!

I prepare one encounter for every 45 minutes to play, I also prepare my encounters in a way that I can skip or shorten the encounters if I need to. This way we could play everything out, if they are fast. Or play only the important stuff and the stuff I had to improvise if they are slow. Also my oneshots are typically longer than my campaign sessions. Campaign is typically 3-4 hours, sometimes up to 6 hours if I have enough time to prepare. Oneshots are typically 6 hours long. Long Sessions are very draining for me, so I don't like to play them often. #4 my DM in the campaign I'm playing in is terrible at this. He didn't invent a connection for my characters to stay in the group and he doesn't touch my backstory in any meaningful way. last Campaign my character wanted to lift a curse and make money. We played up to Level 10. He got the curse by wearing a crown, which he lost while confused and was looking for it ever since. He found the crown and the curse became more severe. Shortly after we defeated the BBEG and without a connection to it, the curse was lifted. No explanation or anything. In the campaign me made together not even 1000 gold but had to pay several gold for staying in an Inn. So we could never buy anything and found nearly no magic Items. (everybody had one in 3 year campaign) My character stayed in the group after the initial hook, because he didn't want to be alone anymore. And they were no new hooks. We just stumbled upon the crown. Current campaign my character lost his family and wants to revive them. He comes from a monster society. He stays with them to get more powerful, also one of the villians is a necromancer and my spore druid has connections to necromancy. I gave my DM some storyhooks he could follow. Getting more powerful to revive, challenges to make him believe he shouldn't seek power to revive his people, revenge to the murderer of his family, solving family issues (he ran away from his monster family for their methods) Nothing happened up to this point and this campaign will end with level 7-8 and we are already at 6.

Do you have any advice how to do a episodic style game kinda like every game night is a one shot but with the same characters each time Or is that something that doesn't exists?