As someone who primarily runs one shots due to scheduling reasons these tips are bang on. I personally find that one shots heavily benefit from the methodology of designing encounters without solutions, letting the players have creative freedom to tackle encounters and letting myself as the DM to scale difficulty on the fly to speed up or slow the session down. An example I have is running a heist where my players needed to attend a lavish party and break into a vault. They knew they needed to get 3 separate keys off of attendees into the vault. Letting my players tackle that challenge on their own was truly unique and let them flex their character's strengths. It also let me better control the pace of the session too by adjusting DCs on the fly.
That's EXACTLY right. I try to just put the pieces on the board and let my players show me how it all comes together. In the pirate tavern one shot, for example, I had no idea how they would disrupt the tavern - I just wrote a bunch of pirate captain NPCs, dropped my players in, and watched the chaos unfold 😅
"Everything takes longer." Truer words were NEVER EVER EVER spoken!!! In every session, one-shot or otherwise, I always write in a couple of modular places I can cut out (or, much less often, pad out) in the face of time management issues.
Discussing time in and out of game was crazy for my player's. 2 player's joined 7 months ago and it has only been 4 weeks in game lol. They were gobsmacked lol😂 I think that is part of the magic of ttrpgs.... time moves differently in game.
@@TalesArcane ran my first actual game the other day. using a pre made module, the players completely by passed an entire section of the module. so i just went off the rails and made shit up that fit the story. got them back on track and completed it. great experience
I was just thinking of running an Easter oneshot in the feywild for some of my friends but as a new DM I felt kinda lost, this came at the perfect time!! :D
This is a really good guide! I did run a one-shot for my family a few months ago and I definitely made it longer than I should have, but they were also new to TTRPGs in general. They've heard me talk about them, but I never went into full detail on the rules and whatnot. My structure was to make each player feel they had a connection to some part of the game. I had three combat encounters: A tutorialized encounter where they learned about cover mechanics and the difference between ranged and melee combat. The second was a sort of timer-based encounter where the enemies would infinitely spawn until they solved a puzzle, which was to release a hound made of light to banish the permanent darkness in the room. The third one was the boss encounter with a minotaur and a handful of skeletons that put everyone's skills to the test. The party consisted of only mages, but heavily buffed. Spell slots were swapped with versatile magic points, and everyone had 30 HP. A lot of the spells were renamed and/or reflavored to be easier to understand and more purposeful. Create/Destroy Water, for example, was simply called Summon Rain and in bold letters, the descriptor said it extinguishes exposed flames. This came in handy for the boss because he had a magical horn with an exposed flame, which served as a sort of magical flamethrower. The spell was cast and the fire went out, making the magic item useless until it dried. It gave the party the edge they needed to kill the minotaur. The best way to think about building combat encounters for a one-shot or even sometimes just one session is to have the second combat in your game be the one you REALLY want to run. That's likely when the players are at their peak and are into the game. Anything after that, they start to drift away, the phones come out, people start yawning, and the pizza's cold.
Don't mind if I do. My current campaign's ran for 3 years and about to end. I'm gonna take small break before starting the next one. During that pause, I'll be holding many one shots to research new rules, classes and mechanics that my players will like. Will take these tips with me into the testing. Keep up the good work! 😎👍
Good video, good talking points! I volunteer as a DM at my local library 1/month to run 1-shots for new players. It's a firm 2-hour slot, so we gotta be really "on our game" to get through an adventure! For my basic 1-shot that I run, I've had groups that sail through all aspects of the adventure in the alloted 2 hours, and I've had groups that I've had to trim out encounters for just to fit the time. Some groups are very tactical, or very concise, and some groups want to analyze and roleplay out everything. Both are fun, but as the DM I need to be cognizant of time remaining vs adventure goals. I want them to have that "finality" of a Boss Fight, but still include enough other game play aspects that they can get a good feel for D&D. Again, great video. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on 1-shots!
Useful tips, thanks for sharing! I’m running two campaign groups right now & some of them Want to play more often so I am starting a “one shot club” a non committal “show up whenever” game that won’t suffer if they are there every time or only once & they have the opportunity to try different races & classes.
I'm thinking save a town one shot each Misson adds a perk bonus ,like save the tavern that's overrun with giant rats ,do this mission it opens up option of short rest ,help make the trade route safe this allows shops open for inventory buying.
One shots are great. I really could have used them in my early rpg days. We didn't have a lot of time to play, and back then our idea of D&D was something you started one day, and hoped to play again. It seldom happened, except for a few special cases. Mostly we just had a lot of beginnings that meant nothing and went nowhere and were very unfocused. And I'm guessing it's the same for a lot of people these days too. Campaigns are a commitment most people can't make. One shots are much easier to manage for everyone.
Gonna be running a pretty stereotypical prison escape one shot with a group of four adventurers, gave them a hard rule (your character must have committed a crime to be here, whether right or wrong) but I am conflicted. I have cube esque puzzles and rooms for them to explore but I am worried it will get stale quickly considering that the majority of time they will be inside the prison. Any tips?
