Write One-Shot RPG Campaigns! (GM Tips w/ Matt Mercer) 

"Or hell, letting someone else GM for once so the usual GM can actually play" *silently walks away*

My favorite two-shot was a story about a warlock that was enslaving/torturing elves. We did it on halloween and it was gonna be a horror themed story. Somebody got a call and had to leave, so we agreed to finish the oneshot JUST before they discovered the evil warlock's lair. Next time we all got together was Christmas Eve. So I was like "f--- it, this evil warlock enslaving elves is gonna be santa". It worked out SO well. Had we gotten togther any time other than halloween, it wouldnt have been horror themed. Had we gotten together AGAIN any time other than Christmas, it wouldnt have been christmas themed. But everything worked out JUST right that it looked like a planned horror santa campaign. We still talk about it today.

Okay just watching matt getting 'angry'/being passive aggressive at things is extremely funny..

"Do they each prefer a different style?" I completely, wholeheartedly, felt that.

I have played D&D (and similar systems) for a few years now, and my friends who have never played before wanted to play. So I created a one shot, that has turned into a regular game, and I decided the way around the awkward "how they all met" scenario was that they were all students under a long time adventurer. It made sense being that it was their first time, and it allowed them to get a feel for the game. I created an NPC to guide them as their teacher on simple raid on a goblin encampment. Once it seemed like they had an idea of what they were doing, I had the teacher get blind sided and kidnapped by some stronger goblins and the party had to rescue him. Just an idea, for new DM's.

instructions unclear, my one shot became a 2 year campaign

I really want to see Matt Mercer playing instead of DM'ing. He's already one of the best DM's I've seen, I want to see if just how he plays a PC too. Maybe for a Liam campaign.

List of the tips: #1 - Assemble the Player Characters #2 - Define the Style #3 - Create a Plot Hook #4 - Develop a Climax #5 - Flesh out Key NPCs #6 - Prepare Social Encounters #7 - Player-tailored Challenges #8 - Loot Rewards #9 - Outline Key Locations #10 - Avoid a Wandering Intro #11 - Keep the Pace Moving #12 - Character Epilogues

I love how the chest on the table shakes for no reason... *MIMIC!*

Wanna a strong plot hook and getting players together? Make some of them hate the villain. Once a player of mine was seeking this antagonist for vengeance and met the other player while he was hanging on a cage by the road, left to die of starvation by the same antagonist. They both had reasons the hate the dude and bonded through the story progression.

'so the GM can play for once!' YES. WHERE MY GM s AT

One shots are also a great place for DMs to test-out game ideas, monster capabilities, items, and story telling techniques without worrying about future ramifications in your main campaign game. -Nerdarchist Ryan

*Matt:* "Avoid the 'You are all strangers and you meet in a bar...' intro. It's awkward." *Critical Role Campaign 2:* _MOST OF THEM ARE STRANGERS AND MEET IN A BAR._

Hah! Loving the Matt M venting - let it all out sir....:D These vids are gold, learning so much :)

Another tip I've received is to make the encounters modular. If you suddenly find yourself low on time, skip or switch out an encounter to get yourself closer to the finale. You simply describe how they managed to track the information they needed or how they fought their way through the guards at the gate instead of having it actually be played out.

my favorite introduction of players coming together is the story that they were all walking the same path, at different points during the day, and each were captured by a fanatical religious village that was going to sacrifice all of them after sundown. Restrained together, they must work together to escape!

I've been DMing a series of single-player adventures to teach my girlfriend how to play D&D, and I've had to make use of some of the methods suggested here. For example, my girlfriend was supposed to spot and subdue a pair of kobolds hiding in a bush in order to find out where their lair was, but she failed her Perception check and started meandering, so I had to improvise a situation where she caught the kobolds in the process of raiding an upstairs room in a tavern. It was messy, but it got the story back on track. I'm as new to DMing as she is to playing, so it's been a learning experience for both of us.

One of my favorite things to do for one shots is genre swapping classic D&D into film noir. Imagine. A city has mysteriously been surrounded by a dense fog. All color within the city now has been sucked away and people within it are slowly beginning to lose their memories. This mysterious apparition has drawn all sorts of characters out of the woodwork from curious mages to curse lifting paladins to thieves who want to take advantage of the trouble. It is up to the players to find out what's going on and restore the city. This gives the DM a chance to really use some of the their more interesting social encounters and gives if combat does break out, characters can vanish into the shadows if they are too important to be killed.

Ah yes the good ol’ 5 part 1 shot. Gotta love when everything u planned is in the woods and they wander into the mountains... I LITERALLY HAD 3 NPC’s SAY “IF I WERE YOU I WOULD LOOK IN THE WOODS”. Bruh!

Our DM did the whole ''you're strangers in a bar'' thing once. It actually turned out to be the best damned intro we've ever had. The way it worked was that we were all in the same town doing various different things but we eventually ended up in the same tarvern. A lot of awkward things happened between our characters,for example my dragonborn paladin accidentally spilled stew over my friends dwarf since he bumped into me and I was simply too tall to even notice him in this really packed tavern full of mercenaries etc. He tried to push me in anger but ended up flying against the wall since,well I just rolled better and was overall A LOT stronger. I recruited the half-orc barbarian played by one of the players into my mercenary group and our next job was to escort a caravan of dwarfs to a city up in the mountains. Needless to say the dwarf that tried to fight me after I spilled stew on him was a part of that caravan. It didn't take long for us to end up as friends thou and the beginning was pretty damn unique to anything we had done before. Usually 2 of the players were already travelling together and then met the third player in a city or a town. I had the tendency to be the third player since I can make shit up on the fly and cause some sort of scene to get the attention of the others so they'd approach my character without breaking RP.

Oh, Matt. In my group we have one rule: The coach don't play.

my parents want to see what this D&D thing is about i will try to make a one-shot for them

my absolute favorite introduction for the players is to have them meet in a bar...fight. a bar fight. you have never, and i mean never, played dnd to its fullest until you see a soon-to-be party busting each other over the heads with tables and using random npcs as weapons

My favorite way to start a one-shot is to drop the PCs into the action immediately. For example instead of starting in a tavern, have the game start with the characters on the ground following a sudden and vicious attack on the caravan they were supposed to be guarding. As they regain consciousness in the middle of the carnage, they realize that the baron's nephew has been taken by a band of cultists who intend to sacrifice him to a dark god and the PCs have just a short time to stop them. :)

I'm planning the second day of what was supposed to be a ONE-shot, so Matt's advice and experience with one shots running long was a nice reminder for my second (and hopefully last) session :P

GM don't get to play. It's a curse that comes with control.

I've been DMing for six years now, but everytime I sit down to prep a new game I watch this. It just helps me

Editing is the best I've seen for GM tips so far. everything's been getting better for this series and I think we've hit the best of the best finally. love the table and background, love Matt's voices that break up the info. love the info of course!! But the hardest was editing thru all these one shots to a single face but I think this is pure success finally!! great job!

I envy the level of experience and talent this man has.

Lighting and editing is on point guys, great job. Matt's performance is great as always, nice and concise tips, thanks :D

For a one-shot, I first had separate mini sessions earlier on with each player to introduce them to the quest. One was hired by the owner of the mine to find out why the gems had stopped coming. Another was an assassin hired to kill the previous PC in a discrete location, like for example an abandoned mine. Another was local priest who'd been away, returning to find the villagers living near the mine gone. Another was a monster hunter who overheard that something had killed everyone in a mine. One by one, they head to the mine, meeting each other on the road or by the entrance. They each got a quick session before reaching the mine, where they could try to find clues from the empty village, or hagle for rewards or research their target, etc. Each got a unique motivation to enter the same mine, knowing different clues, and having different equipment depending on what they found, bought or haggled for before the quest.

I feel like this advice can be used for writing short stories as well.

0:33 Well, it only took 8 months but I think the other CR members finally got the message. Trinket's Honey Heist was a blast!

I'd say this is definitely the best GM Tips so far; absolutely excellent advice that can help with planning any campaign. In fact, as I watched, I thought, "man, this sounds like it'd be good for any campaign," and then Matt Mercer said that this advice was good for any campaign! Keeping it moving is definitely good advice; the last one shot I ran went about five hours longer than expected because I didn't design it tightly enough. My advice is to recognize that this isn't going to be as epic or in-depth as your main campaign. Keep it short and punchy; villains with clear motivations and straightforward plots are easier, and there will probably only be time for a *small* handful of encounters, depending on how long your sessions are.

0:45 #1 - Assemble the Player Characters 1:08 #2 - Define the Style 1:40 #3 - Create a Plot Hook 2:38 #4 - Develop a Climax 3:20 #5 - Flesh out Key NPCs 3:49 #6 - Prepare Social Encounters 4:07 #7 - Player-tailored Challenges 4:34 #8 - Loot Rewards 4:43 #9 - Outline Key Locations 5:03 #10 - Avoid a Wandering Intro 5:30 #11 - Keep the Pace Moving 6:00 #12 - Character Epilogues

I’m super interested in these one shots. Seems like a great way to get noobs into it and a good exercise for new DMs. Thanks for the ideas.

0:32 haha yeah that is probably the worst part about being a DM/GM...

a campaign is a long series of one-shots that connect in some way.

Perfect summary Matthew! You have long been the greatest inspiration and motivation for me to dm! Especially in those times when the group struggles and you have to get them back on track. Our game really hit a totally different level thanks to your unique style of play! Truly - the way the game is meant to be played! Wanted to say thank you for that! Best regards from Germany

This has been the most helpful GM tips ever! Great job Matt + G&S team.

Matt, honey, are you okay? 😂 You’re being saltier than the Dead Sea.

One shot: Percy on a natural 20

I needed this, so thanks @Steve Bonario for doing this! This is your list w/timestamps: List of the tips: #1 - Assemble the Player Characters - 0:43 #2 - Define the Style - 1:05 #3 - Create a Plot Hook - 1:36 #4 - Develop a Climax - 2:37 #5 - Flesh out Key NPCs - 3:17 #6 - Prepare Social Encounters - 3:47 #7 - Player-tailored Challenges - 4:05 #8 - Loot Rewards - 4:32 #9 - Outline Key Locations - 4:41 #10 - Avoid a Wandering Intro - 5:00 #11 - Keep the Pace Moving - 5:28 #12 - Character Epilogues - 5:59

Man, this short video helped out so much! I’m a new DM and finally convinced my friends to play. I was struggling to complete my one shot campaign. But now I know exactly how to get things to unfold!

me and my freinds all co-Gm a game together, we take turns Gming different parts no one Gms when their charicter is involved, no one has all the answers, and no one has the complete adventure in mind, its really cool to see how the adventure and world unfolds with three seperate gms (and I actualy get to play, which is nice)

If the one shot is anything like me, the climax will be in 37 seconds.

Thanks for the tips Matthew, you're amazing and I'm glad you take the time to make these videos

Thank you very much! Four years in and the tips are absolutely as helpful as they were when you recorded this!

"Having someone else DM for once so you can actually play" Literally me right now. After half a year of weekly dming I'm so burnt out. One of my regulars will be making a dungeon crawler one shot and finally I can play a halfling monk of my dreams.

I'm about to play my first ever game of d&d and my friends I'm playing with want me to dm it so I decided to run a one shot so videos like this really help so thank you

Doing my first dm session ever in 2 weeks with a one shot and this helped so much, once again geek and sundry / Mr Mercer saving the day!

This was a really good, dense set of tips for running basically any session and has given me more than a couple ideas! Thanks, Matt and team! :)

One thing I felt was missing, speaking from experience, is not to be too attached to you pre-planned 'climax'. Remember that you're not nudging your players along a pre-set path, and that players are unpredictable, they may just veer off in a direction that you hadn't anticipated at all. They may kill an important NPC, who had some vital information. The murder leading to them being wanted by the authorities, and suddenly the party are on the run, the supposed story/plot now suddenly taking second place to their survival. Etc.(I've been a player in that exact scenario...) So even with a one-shot, be prepared to improvise. Speaking as a player, there's nothing to drain the fun out of a game, like feeling as if your GM has already pre-written the entire story, and you're just being pulled along for the ride. Preferably, even with a one-shot, the GM and the players are developing the story together.

"...Or host a character creation meet up." Not in 2020 I won't!

Gonna be running a one-shot this weekend for a bunch of new players and one long-standing one from another campaign I GM. Thanks for the tips - I'm glad I went back to this video!

So much good stuff in this video! Saving this video to rewatch later, several times probably.

I would love to sit in front of that background and just do the evil laugh for hours...

I did this one one shot where we had 2 campaigns running at the same time so we got all the participating memebers of the party to have a civil war in the story and each character from both campaigns fought. One side was have restrictions on adventures adventuring and the other side was allowing the adventures to still able to do what they do without restrictions

One of the best GM tips videos I've come across. Great inspiration!

Thank you, Matt! Running a one-shot tomorrow and this was super helpful

Starting the game In Media Rez is a great way to get the one shot moving

"so the usual gm can actually play" :D :D

I keep coming back to this one because It's SOOOO HELPFUL!!!

Thanks matt for the great advice! Just finished hosting my first one shot and it was a crazy success! Thanks so much

Thanks Matt, really usefull tips.

That is weird. I can hear the first 30 seconds of a video where Matt Mercer starts talking.

I know I'm over 18 months late to this video, but OMG, Matt Mercer, you are so fun to watch, listen to and learn from! 😆 I'm wanting to write my first RPG and this has helped a lot. Many thanks from a new Aussie fan. 🇦🇺

Thank you for the tips Matt and Geek & Sundry!!

Matt Mercer could say a sentence and turn it into something of a story

I personally think that memory loss or mind wipe spells can be useful for starting a campaign, the heroes have a past together but can't remember it or at least can't remember many details, that way you can write the story as they go and based on how they act, or have them write what they think their character may have been in relation to the world, since you can show them part of the world without them having to be involved in it deeply already. It gives a lot of room for fiddling about behind the scenes, without it seeming unreal or made up on the fly :D

primarily, these videos are to inform us. as a secondary purpose, Matthew uses these to vent DM frustration

The level of sass this man exudes is insane. And I love it.

I made a Christmas themed oneshot campaign where children were being kidnapped and the bbeg was krampus... The adventurers located an NPC bard called Chris that aided them in their fight against the demon... No one in the party knew that Chris was actually santa clause (Kris Kringle) and during the climax, Kris fused with krampus and accended to godhood after the final strike and monologue made by the rogue welding the mighty dagger Odin's Beard at the bewilderment to my players (biggest and successful twist in any campaign I've ran because of how oblivious the players were to the fact that I wrote freaking santa clause into the campaign) where one of the NPCs (teifling paladin that was the scapegoat because of his demonic appearance) the party encountered in the prison slated for execution became a paladin to the everwinter God Nicholas. After the oneshot we expanded upon the story and another friend joined the table and took over the teifling paladin and we've been running ever since... It helps that they've never watched critical role though because I kinda plagiarized Viktor into my campaign

Question: For why is Matt Mercer so hot?

Really wish I had seen this sooner. I’ve been writing/running a one-shot (which has actually dragged on to a 3-shot now) to give our DM a chance to not be in the hot seat. This has been a little guide to help sort out a few of the bits I wasn’t 100% on.

I love how he punctuates his points with humor. It really keep your attention engaged.

Is it just me that felt like everyone shot I've GMed has followed the deppresed, longrunning GM tone. So many random Inveestigation rolls, sometimes an urn is just an urn.

LET LIAM DM AND LET MATT PLAY 2K17

It's an helpful list of tips ^^. Recently, I've read a manual (Return of the Lazy DM) that shortens it to 8 points instead of the 12 mentioned by Matthew (review the characters, create a strong start, outline potential scenes, define secrets and clues, develop fantastic locations, outline important NPCs, choose relevant monsters, select magic item rewards). It's really reassuring that they are more or less the same, it means that there's an underlying logic that can be understood and used to the DM advantage.

Love your style. You have the sort of presentation that could make pretty much anything sound interesting.

And I'm over here casually preparing for session 4 of my halloween "one"-shot, wondering what the heck went wrong. It was supposed to be a quick 1 session break from the already nigh-50 session campaign.

I personally prefer the "holy crap we're all imprisoned, hey who's this guy in our cell" way of introducing a new player character

That was an absolutely fantastic primer for how to put together a campaign. I've been toying with the idea of getting into GMing for awhile now and this is certainly super inspiring and really puts the basics in an easily accessible format while also imparting an impressive amount of info in a short span of time. Tha I you for the pointers 🔮💖

I'm working on my first dming experience, im making a oneshot for some friends and this was super helpful thanks matt!

Lmao I'm trying to get a group together with my friends by doing a one shot to teach them the rules and I asked them what they wanted to be (alongside my cleric NPC to accompany them) and one said "can I be an albino cat" so I was like "um you can be a Druid and turn into a cat at level 2", one wanted to be a memer so I said "bard. Just bard. You have a recorder." Another didn't care so I was like THANK GOD I CAN BALANCE THIS DUMBASS PARTY so she's a fighter. And they have the best names.

idk why I'm watching D&D videos. I've never played it or really plan to but I guess I just find it kinda interesting in a weird way. Idk lol

Good timing. Our DM has just mentioned that after out initial 5thish level campaign she would like to do a one shot or two. It will be my first time DMing for a group and this has really helped.

Hope these keep coming!

Letting someone else GM so the GM can actually play. That is me 😭. I run a system that nobody uses so finding a player that enjoys the system enough to play enough to feel comfortable GMing is difficult.

Not that i want matt to stop DMing crit role but i would like to see him play a character, just to see what he's like as a player

Thank you Matt, this will really help me out with running a test game preqeul for my group before the actual campaign

Great point about moving the Story Beats.

Jesse McCree teaches me how to make killer one shots I’m sorry, but is it noon?

I am not gay, but i love him so much. Man, you are such are great person.

Thanks Matt! I wrote a mystery one-shot and played it with my regular group. It was a blast!

came over as soon as I got the notice! Love this series! I had an intro once where they all gathered at Ye Olde Unemployment Office because they were all between adventures, lol. It helped explain how they all randomly gathered, pointed them to their first objective quickly, and gave everyone a cheap laugh as I described a crotchety old lady running basically a bounty hunting office for adventuring, lol

Hi

Sweet Jesus do my players hate dungeons... it's actually funny how much they hate them

I’m going to be DMing for my first time in a one-shot (to help give the usual DM a much needed break). This is honestly the best advice I’ve seen and I feel waaayyyy less intimidated now. Whew 😅

Thank you for this video, the epilogue said it all - this is good advice for any type of RPG campaign!