How to Run a One-Shot Roleplaying Game
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 มี.ค. 2023
- Phase One: Introduction
Phase Two: Practice and Advantage/Disadvantage
Take a Break
Phase Three: Boss Fight
Learn how to plan your one-shot game session, what each phase is for, how they work together and what your basic time frames should be.
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#roleplaying #oneshotgameplay #dungeonsanddragons - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
Phase 4: the group enjoys it so much they ask you to keep playing next week, and you become a forever DM.
(my pandemic one shot for some friends ended up spiralling thus: in my case, I did a murder mystery instead of an explicit build up to a boss fight.)
Good morning sunshines!
Hearing it laid out like this, the one-shot can act like a literal tutorial for new players, teaching them a new game.
Shadowrun did that well with the first edition by including the Food Fight encounter in the back of the book. Second edition omitted it and put it in the Quick Start Rules book. I don’t remember if it was in the third edition, but it wasn’t in the fourth.
Excellent topic. I consider one shots, tailored to the players themselves, as my specialty.
Right-o! I particularly liked that this could be more than just a 'one shot'; among other things it might be sort of a session 0.5, or the "intro and/or 'vetting process' to see if this group will carry on adventuring together beyond this 'one shot'".
Great ideas; very useful, thank you!
Solid dope, AJ. You didn't say anything I didn't know, but I didn't know I knew it until you said it. That's tightly related to one definition of genius. Rock on, my man.
That's a good formula. It gives a bit of everything.
This sort of formula really does work well across genres. We used to use this sort of thing all the time when I was starting out to get short sessions that would fit into an afternoon, maybe two if things ran long. Our local D&D club would do modules for long arcs but short sessions are where I first started to home brew things.
Great episode AJ, really solid advice!
Great advice! I've had problems make one shots actually last one session
For such a high stakes, winner takes all game I'd let the one-shot winner take their pick of treasure from a long list of wondrously crafted objects and prized powerful items. That tends to make them foolhardy enough to try another one-shot game!
Very handy guide.
More like this! Looking into running a few one shots of Call of Cthulhu but scared to mess it up
While it is true that you can’t screw it up by not running it, you can’t have fun either. You get better at it by screwing it up a couple of times, so go ahead and do it.
Messing up is part of learning so don't be scared.
My old DMs had players roll dexterity checks when under Fear/horror effects each round to keep from tripping over their own feet when fleeing a monster.
Staircases were fun.
Don't forget Time Dilations when under a large adrenaline surges creating bullet time Matrix effects.
The monster moves at the speed of plot.
One PC my feel like they are moving at slow motion and the monster is terrifying fast. Or another PC just disappears like grease lightning cause they are running that fast..
Perfect timing
It just dawned on me I’ve been running one shots my whole life… just out of circumstance. This means all my players never got over Level 2; everyone who played my games ALWAYS played hardcore mode 🤣 My poor Wizard friend never got that Fireball. Crossing my fingers my first serial adventure happens next week. I think this is good advice on how to pace ANY adventure type. Thanks friend!
A West Marches game is just a series of dozens of one-shot adventures. Each one is a stand-alone session, so that you can work new players into and old players out of the campaign from session to session. It creates flexibility if you have some players who can’t be there every week.
Great topic, great advise, now desperately need some written illustrational module to this!
I can arrange that. good feedback, thank you. The Patreon post for this video is Unlocked for public view, so you can read the full script for the video here: www.patreon.com/posts/how-to-run-one-80873552?Link&
Thanks AJ.
Excellent guide, AJ
Hey, thanks!
I like using the ars magica trick of having three pcs. A magus, a conpanion, and grogs for one shots.
Yep, pre-rolled ("Pre-generated" or "Pre Gen") player characters to choose from are a total plus for me, if I sit down to a convention game that is what I expect to be ready for me.
This will definitely help my time management.
I’m a bit surprised you didn’t mention that the one-shot is the foundation of West Marches campaign games. It’s pretty much the exact same formula, using the same format from week to week over the course of months or years.
It’s a good intro tutorial either way.
I'm not a habitual DM of West Marches campaigns, non-online gaming makes that sort of campaign very difficult to pull off unless you have an expansive gaming community.
@@AJPickett I almost never do either. Broad campaign goals are difficult using the episodic sit-com model.
It's hard getting Lord of the Rings using a Wagon Train format.
Even before watching I appreciate this video AJ, most of my players have busy real life schedules so d&d is a 3rd or 4th priority if I'm lucky
Nice. This is great practical advice. I often find one shots to be the most challenging, or at least daunting for me personally. I can be great at building tension over longer campaigns but the one shots have always seemed too intimidating. I’m gonna try this. Great breakdown. Thanks AJ
Glad it was helpful!
6min information tips seem like a good chose, or 10minutes depending on YT algorithm feeds.
How to Run One Shots, .. practice, practice, and more practice.
My first game shop back in the late 1990's just before WotC. I came up with pre written PCs on index cards with a random drawn secret background card.
Short mini games of 20 minute Soap Opera being fast pace. Such as a wizard making deals with the thief guild for their place not to get rob. Or other social of combat set ups.
When WotC came out, starting games were 1st to 3rd level rogues working as meat packers having to fight off large river rats trying to get to the salted pork. Or rounding up lost pigs and trying not to start a family feud.
It was the way my 20yo self was trying to build up at the given shop I could run interesting games, and it gives the stander DMs the chance to play short games instead of running them themselves.
2.) AD&D Dragon Magazine, covered a concept of Home Front campaign making use of AD&D class supplement books of " The Complete Guide to ..".
PC class kit, Peasant Hero being of that from any given PC class of low social level. In short village militia members.
a.) Real threats to pre modern societies, ..
i.) pigeon, crows and other birds would settle down on a farmers grain fields and eat everything causing the risk of famine, and tax forfeit of land. So chasing and clubbing rats out of the barn was a fact of life and in AD&D following up with WotC 3e killing rats along with large to giant insect vermin is a way to level up low level N/PC.
ii.) cattle/herd rustling, fun read or YT listen is the USA/Candana Pig War. Bunch of poor bored farm lads crossing state/country lines to sell pigs for sport nearly cause a boarder war.
b.) One shots in villages or small town allows the players to create the locations N/PC to interact with.
3.) Legend of the USA cowboy Billy the Kid.
High action 1980's movies, Young Guns.
Historically, Billy barely killed 21 to 24 men in his crime career.
Kind of reframes action movies, video games, and ttrpgs.
We should make a discussion tab on my discord server and come up with a training document that covers this topic in some detail.
@@AJPickett Sounds cool, but I have yet figure out how to navigate Discord.
YT eats most of my time when I am not dealing with creative blocks. Background noise while I try to draw. Reading takes up a lot of time from over focus hand & eye work.
But you did mention you were going to start these 10min short videos to function as tutorials in world building.
So you started with D&D ecologies, short story taler videos, and now Rifts world settings ecologies, ..
Use your mins to create an encounter scene, along with a posted flat map to match. Have 1d6 PC that you can quickly voice act. .. SKIP .. the game mechanics on PC creation.
Just move the mini figures around the set board and tell the Silliest story you can for 10min. Roll high to win, even number means simply wins or losses, and odd numbers means challenge efforts.
My grandparents had puppet shows.
My parents had Barbie Doll/ G.I.Joes. and Star Trek " dolls. "
You and me had He-Man, DC Super Friends, and Star Wars "action figures."
Now more or less forty years .. wargaming mini.
a.) Free flowing story on the fly with no plot made up as you go fun house. " haven't seen yet."
b.) Short scrip story with few plot line flow chart. A game run in one hour or less. " maybe you have made already just don't remember from where."
c.) You have already posted a few live stream games with your inner friend group. So you have shown how experience players do the game. " have seen a few times."
2.) My problem is I having been in a sit down table game in close to 15years. Nor have I bother to read through any of my old books in the past four years. More current DMs can do a better job than me.
Honestly you already have enough on your plate as is. I know what it is like to have an over active mind, at least we now have " I talk it types " as a common computer function. So you can get enough laying down rest. Talk to you Art A.I. program and word craft a picture. Step by step on the colors of a landscape. Old Saga starts off a story of a given landsite then mentions the adventure problem.
Thank you for the video and mention of a discord tab, ..
Have a wonderful weekend.
👍👍
Okay fine, I just go Leroy jenkins! 😀😄🙂
Hey AJ, do you think the antagonist in the darkest dungeon game is more along the lines of aberrations from the far realm or demons from the abyss? I'm thinking about a campaign inspired by it.
Having never played the game, I can only go by my brief research into it (it's absolutely not a Rogue-like game, btw, that refers to a top-down view, not just that the layout is a procedurally-generated dungeon, which is a pet peeve of mine the gaming reporting industry is rife with, getting basic definitions wrong because they don't understand their origins.. the developers originally planned the game using the tiled top-down view, but later changed it to a Side Scroller), the crashed Meteor content is absolutely Aberration stuff, it's directly inspired by 'The Color Out of Space' by HP Lovecraft, and indeed, the whole vibe of the game is very much a homage to the classic structure of the Call of Cthulhu plot lines, where the hook is the form of a document, journal, letter or some such that leads the player characters to investigate some unknown and spooky location where some sort of eldritch terror lurks. So TLDR: Aberrations for sure. And huge thank you for the Superthanks tip.
@@AJPickettThanks Mr. Pickett I really appreciate it.
Do you think you will go back to covering dnd lore? Seems like it's been your bread and butter it's folly to abandon it. Upset at wotc or not it's gotta be painful for the channel.
There are MANY fantasy games that I can make lore for, D&D is just one of them, and since I don't do stats, just ecology and fictional folklore, all I am really saying no to is Wizards of the Coast and the Forgotten Realms... not a big deal really. So yeah, I have a crap load of homebrew critters I can pour out in endless videos. I don't think anyone will blame me for taking a break from D&D for a while though after that OGL saga, and yeah, I am never going to make free promotional vids for WotC again, that's for damn sure.. that company is going to sink itself, it would be folly to stay onboard pretending the titanic is not sinking, when you think about it.
@@AJPickett”the company is going to sink itself” hits different after the Pinkerton debacle. Still, thank you for the large backlog of DnD lore vids that you’ve made the last many years. Helps us DM’s tremendously and as someone stumbling across your channel fairly recently, it’s truly a diamond in the rough. Thanks AJ
Could a game session be considered a one-shot if somehow managers the last 3 days straight, or is that what you consider a marathon at that point?
We call that a Three Shot or Mini Campaign.