One Shots

Episode 126 – One Shots
(aka “All I Need Is One Good Shot”)

In these times of muchos online play, virtual conventions and more, it’s worth taking time to reflect on how to put together a decent one shot game and tips on playing or running. This time Gaz and Stunt Baz (Guy) talk through some expert advice on setting up your one shot games, garnered from many years of trial and error. Join the lads as they lay out what to do with your one shot slots, whether as a first timer or older hand looking for new tidbits!

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[Dirty Left Field] Indie [Hippy] Con

IndieCon started a little later than planned, my man with a car was short on holidays, so we had to pick our gaming days carefully. Nevertheless the Kenners Fun Bus was down at the convention late Thursday night and we could have a natter with the lodge crowd before waking fresh and excitable for Slot 1 the following day. This meant missing the Ice Breakers and meeting up with people for a chat, but at least we’d got the main part of the con to look forward to.

Conception Report 2011

With my bags packed I settled down to watch a movie (given the usual AK Time Delay) and wouldn’t you know it, Kenners turns up on time shocker! So we were off and down at the Drunken Lodge within four hours. Cool beans, an all time record. It should of course be referred to as the Healthy Lodge, as we had a veritable banquet every night of only the finest cuisine and nary a bag of crisps was opened. We did have booze, but a man’s got to live… and I needed something to fight off the impending cold that loomed large (both outside the lodge and in my sinuses).

Evilgaz Dragonmeet Report

For me DM started with a stopover at Lemur’s house on the Friday, and boy was I disturbed to note the picture of geese in the spare room, worrying that he might be subconsciously brainwashing me into playing Mouseguard the following day. I need not have feared…

Tentacles Omega Con Report

How can you not be tempted by a journey to play games in a castle on the Rhine? I was there for my third year and it was as great as ever.

The journey to Bacharach was as easy as ever, with only a slight delay at the airport on the Deutschland side while the bus turned up, but the sun was shining and a free beer on the journey over was most welcome. Everything about the con was ruthlessly organised as always, with the notable exception of games, for which there seems to be an almost masochistic desire to make it a scrum to sign up for things. I took to my usual method of avoiding troubles by taking lots of games to run. Apparently I now hold the record for most games played at a Tentacles, and as that was the last one…

Scenario Building

So how do you write a scenario for a convention or one-shot?  Simply don’t know where to start?  Well, if its 4e there’s a ton of things you can buy or download, so just boiler plate one of them and change the baddies round.  If its a left field hippy game then you probably make it up with the players along the way.  But if you want some on advice on how to knock something together, with some interesting bits on the way then you might find the following useful.  Its a method I’ve been using for some time, maybe it’ll help someone else with a place to start at least…

Something wicked this way comes

So I was having a brief conversation with my old mate Danurai today. He’s been working up a potential new character fore our weekly D&D game, a Drow Avenger. Fair enough. Then he wanted to know if it was ok to be evil. he’d been reading an article about just such a thing, so before I started replying to him in BIG CAPITAL LETTERS saying NO, I thought I owed it to him to give it a read. As I did I realised that there are all sorts of ways to play a game, but there are some that simply don’t sit well with your regular home game.

“Whether or not you agree to let one person in the game play an evil character, or let everyone in the game play evil characters, you should absolutely have the talk. What’s that? I like to call it the “don’t be a jerk and don’t be a baby” talk. It’s a real, honest discussion about the tone of the game you are about to play. It’s a verbal agreement to not let the nefarious actions of characters spill over into real-life arguments. It is the group realization that you are about to play something that will be challenging. It’s going to be more work than a normal campaign.” Stephen Radney-MacFarland

A one shot is another kettle of fish though. Could an all evil game be just right if you had 4 or 5 hours to let rip with all your dark desires?

Of course, some RPGs make playing the bad guys all part of the fun, World of Darkness immediately springs to mind. But that’s the default way of playing in that world. What would be fun to turn on it’s head?

There’s been some cracking zombie games of late, All Flesh… being perhaps the best known. Maybe it would be interesting to turn the tables and actually play the roles of the brains seeking ravenous hordes? On a related note, did you ever catch the Marvel Zombies series where the traditional superheroes all caught the flesh eating bug. There’s got to be mileage in running a supers one shot where you all play the villains, undead villains at that.

Of course, the traditional games could get a makeover too. D&D has always had Drow, Tieflings and other ‘bad boys’. I’m not convinced there’s a viable campaign in igt, but for a one shot, I’d like to see the results. Or perhaps just flip the presumed game on it’s head and play the monsters defending their dungeon against the predations of a band of shiny armoured adventurers. I’ve got an Ogre based scenario that does just that, I’ll do a review of it if I remember. 

Your thoughts, comments and opinions, always welcome!