The 5 BEST One Shots I've Ever Run!

you do to play d tonight but you've got nothing prepared well fear not random internet person today i'm going to talk to you about one shots and why they're going to save your bacon greetings gamers i'm anto and as a free action i can tell you to like and subscribe and today we're going to be talking about one shots what are they why are they useful and then i'm going to be giving you some examples of one shots i've used in my games i'm sure most of us have been in a situation before where it's the morning of game day and for whatever reason you have absolutely nothing prepared you have no idea what your players are going to be doing no idea where they be going and you have no clue as to what is going to be happening during the session tonight maybe you've just finished a major arc in a campaign or you've hit a bit of a lull whatever the reason this can come up almost anywhere in a campaign and it can be the sort of thing that can really derail you as a dungeon master you can get stuck in this cycle of oh my god i need to prepare i don't have anything prepared what am i gonna do but no matter how you got in the situation a one shot is a great way to get you out of it so what is a one shot what are we talking about here well a one shot is a self-contained isolated adventure that usually has no bearing on the wider story if you're playing as part of a campaign or is completely disconnected from your campaign it might just be the sort of thing that you play with a group of completely new characters that you're only going to play for that one week i think that one shots are a great way to introduce new players into the game because it's a really low investment on their part you're not saying to them look come and start this campaign with me you've never played dnd before but we're going to play for two years and see if you like it you can run a one shot and see if they like the mechanics before they invest really heavily into the game and it's a good way as a dungeon master to mix things up if you've been playing a long term campaign with a really serious tone for a couple of months or maybe a year using a one-shot to introduce some humor or have something a little bit silly is a great way for everyone to kind of reset and take a break from the main campaign and get excited again to play the game i think of one shots a lot like a bottle episode of tv you are isolating a single moment away from the main story and it has very little impact on the wider story as a whole in fact approaching a one shot kind of like how you do a bottle episode is a really great way to go about it there are three main pillars that make a great bottle episode that you can apply to your one shots the first is a limited cast of characters one of the things i know i struggle with a lot is populating the whole world full of npcs and this isn't something you have to worry about in one shot you could focus in on a handful of npcs that are going to have a lot of interaction with the party and you don't have to worry about those wider world npcs because it's isolated from your main campaign you probably don't need to worry about who they interact with and what the different political intrigue is with all these different npcs or how their interactions is gonna impact things in the long term you could just have a couple of caricature characters that get laugh out your players or your players can really attach themselves to and then just keep running with it the next pillar of the bottle episode is a limited location again this works really well for a one shot because it cuts down on that prep time you can just isolate your entire session to a single location or a small area and that means that you're not worrying about having to prep something half a world away for your players and finally the last pillar of a bottle episode of a tv show is seeing things in a new light usually with a limited cast of characters in a limited location over the course of an episode you will learn new things about a character well the same can be true in a one shot you can use a one shot that is completely different in tone or subject matter to your usual campaign to reveal things about the player characters or have them discover things about themselves that they otherwise wouldn't have you know how these characters react to this new environment could tell them things that they didn't know about themselves so now i want to tell you about five of the one shots that i have run in my game and what worked about them first up is an adventure i called facility 42 my players had been doing some main quest there for a fairly long time now and they've just come to a new city and they were in no rush to go and carry on with their main quest so they wanted some down time they mulled around the city looking for odd jobs and they were just trying to find something a little bit different to what we had been doing for months so i had them approached by an npc who offered to sell them a treasure map they were immediately suspicious as they should be a weird person comes up to on the street and says i've got a treasure map for you you are going to be suspicious but they still paid for it and took that treasure map and head out into the wilderness to investigate this location this facility 42. for the most part facility 42 was a classic five-room dungeon there were guardians at the entrances there were puzzles and traps and monsters to fight and new loot to discover but i also sprinkled in some extra elements i used this session to introduce a new character to the party a new player characters to the party six the marion this is a homebrew race that one of my players made and we use this adventure to sort of introduce some of the world law about this new race these living marionette dolls almost construct warforged like creatures six had also been exploring this facility and she'd gotten herself stuck in one of the traps so when the players arrived and solved the puzzle to get through to one of the rooms they found her there and then they all joined up and continued searching this facility for the rest of the adventure so in terms of cast of characters i kept it really limited there was the one npc that gave him the adventure map and then there was the one new player character there were no other talking npcs in this i did sprinkle a few dead previous adventures in this facility and a few journal entries just to mix things up so they had some things to interact with that weren't combat or puzzles but it meant that i didn't have to do a huge amount of prep and then for the location again it kept it really simple it was all isolated to this one facility i mapped out the facility really simply on the don john website i just grabbed around the map and threw that in front of the players and it worked really really well we had a lot of fun part of that came from the seeing things in a new light because this was isolated from the main campaign i got to use a lot of things that i normally wouldn't quite high-tech traps and weird esoteric magic i even threw in a mech suit that had been built for a beholder so they could walk around all armored it was really cool a lot of sci-fi elements that wouldn't fit elsewhere in my game but that the players got to interact with and get new experiences from facility 42 worked excellently as a one-shot because it was just a stand-alone dungeon there was nothing super complex about it they got a little bit of new information about the world but nothing that they absolutely needed it was nothing that they felt they had to have the next one shot that i want to talk to you about is one i called jojo's bizarre adventure and it actually took place immediately following facility 42 so the players still weren't ready to go and do main quest stuff they just wanted to have a bit of break a bit of down time so i decided that there was going to be a circus in the city that they were in and once they realized there was a circus there they thought that could be really cool let's go and see the circus for the evening during the daytime before the circus i sprinkled in a few hints here and there that there had been some children gone missing nothing too of the nothing that the players directly interacted with but just a in my description i described how they could hear people shouting a child's name in the background or things like that things that would become relevant later on so the evening comes around they head to this circus and they take in the show there's different access trapeze artists acrobats fire breathers all the usual kind of circus things and then there was jojo the amazing clown now i had jojo be a very stereotypical clown big shoes big hair brightly colored outfit big ref around his neck and during part of the act he called people out from the crowd and one of the characters in the party decided they would go up and this routine was they were going to stand against the board and jojo was going to throw knives and sort of pin their clothes to the board you know the standard circus affair but what i did was when after he'd thrown the knives when he came to collect him i described that he had a terrible smell about him this eggy sulfric smell about him and told that to the player and carried on they enjoyed the rest of the circus and went home for the night and the next morning they were contacted by their contact at the local law enforcement who told them that a series of children had gone missing they were given the locations for each of the missing children where they'd been snatched from and then the players went about the city starting to investigate they had been asked to do it to keep it on the down-low so people didn't start panicking so the players are going around and they're investigating and the one common thread that starts to come out of it is that all of these people all of the children that have been snatched had been to the circus and it was after that that they got snatched so the players reasonably decided let's go to the circus and see what we can find out they arrive there and they realize that jojo the amazing clown is gone they do a bit more investigating find out that jojo was last seen near the river near a sewer culvert now you've probably cottoned on to where this is going this is a very it a clown stealing children and taking them into the sewer that was very intentional i knew that jojo was going to be a shape-shifting pennywise style creature so the players descend into the sewers and then it's full horror mode i lean into every trope i over describe everything everything is a danger there is danger around every single corner and they navigate the sewer at one point while they're exploring they hear a child's voice and a child runs up to them supposedly one of the missing children almost too late they discover that this is actually jojo in disguise and the child morphs into this terrific beast that they have to fight and kill and once they've killed the beast it reverts back to the child's form so they're really confused they don't know whether these children are alive they're dead it adds to all that horror element and as things go on they get approached by another child and this one doesn't attack them they fight a few more monsters they think they fought jojo they have this child in tow that hasn't attacked him that they can't detect anything on so they assume that the child is fine i don't actually think they cast any kind of detection on the child no i don't think they did they probably should have because they helped the child get out of the sewer and then the next day they discover that the child's parents have turned up dead and the child is missing and that it was actually jojo shape-shifting as the child who they escorted out and is now out in the world loose i loved this one shot because it was completely different to what we were doing at the time it had a lot of horror vibes there was a bit of silliness with it it was a clown and a circus you know all that kind of stuff is inherently funny and it didn't have a happy ending the heroes didn't win at the end of it so playing with genre is one of the ways that i really enjoy messing around with my one shots and introducing just something a bit different for the players the next one shot that i want to talk to you about came about purely because of player choice and the player's actions early on in the campaign the players were in the first big city langdale and they'd been settling in doing a few odd jobs and they discovered an underground fighting ring and they'd started taking part in it they'd realized that this was a good way for them to make some money betting on each other betting on themselves doing a bit of under the table dealing whilst doing these fights and they started to make quite a reputation for themselves in fact they started to become really quite famous among the underground scene in langdale so much so that nev the owner of the tavern got in touch with him and said look i've got an opportunity for you it's completely illegal we're going to have to leave the city to do it but it will bring in a lot of money if you do it they agreed this fight would take place out on a galley in the middle of the ocean away from all the pesky laws and the players were going to be fighting a rock giant if they won the fight they would win a big prize of gold if they lost they would be left to sink to the bottom of the ocean now this one shot was huge amounts of fun and the main reason was because of that isolated location usually if you're fighting a giant creature you want to put distance between you you want to use your mobility to your advantage you want to attack it with ranged attacks they couldn't really do any of that on this ship it was really cramped they had almost no space to move around versus this giant so it forced them to come up with really creative ways to combat the giant they had to climb up the rigging to try and drop down on top of it they would use the boom of the mass to try and push the giant out of the way they turned cannons around to fire it all the while the giant is just hurling players off the side of the ship so they'd have to climb back up into combat it was really memorable because they had to use their environment in really creative ways because they didn't have any other choice it was a really simple setup but it ended up being one of our most memorable even after that campaign ended hundred-plus sessions later it was still one of the things that the players brought up as being a highlight of the campaign for them and i think it's a really excellent example of how that really limiting setting can work windowsphere in terms of characters the only character i really had to do any work with was nev who they'd met before so i wasn't really creating any new characters the only setting i had to do was the ship i just had to make a ship map that didn't take a lot of time at all and then the new take that they had was this different way of having to approach combat all their combats in the past have been fairly standard affairs whereas this was completely unlike anything they'd ever done before and like i said that came entirely out of player choice if they hadn't decided to go and become part of this underground fighting arena that would never have happened the next one shot i want to talk about is personally one of my favorites of the entire campaign and we're going from something that came completely from player agency to something that i imposed utterly on the players and this i called happy death day my players had arrived in a new city and they had a couple days to kill before they were moving on to their next main quest plotline during that time i had an npc approach one of the characters and i said to the player i said this character has approached you you have met them before you are old friends and i asked if the player was okay with that i messaged them before and i was like look i've got this idea are you okay if this npc approaches you and says they know you and they're like yeah of course so i dove straight into it a few other characters were shopping and i had this character lysander quinn approach the players and direct his attention to the party cleric and say he knew the party cleric lysander was a paladin of a group known as the swords of valor who were famed monster hunters in their day and he's now an old man and he's seen godfrey the party cleric and recognized him and he's saying oh i'm having a retirement party i want to invite you and your friends to it now the swords of valor were famed monster hunters and they were renowned for slaying a whole variety of monsters through the years but there was one creature that always eluded them the vampire lucian now i made a really big deal of describing to the cleric just how terrible lucy and the vampire was and the reason i did this is lucien was my kind of like my big red herring i knew that my players were all you know intelligent people they're familiar with story tropes they've played with me long enough to know the kind of things that i like to pull i knew they would expect lucian to turn up at this party you know this lysander quinn's having a retirement party he's inviting all the other swords of valor to attend it's the first time that all of these veteran paladins are going to be in the same place in decades perfect time for this famed vampire to come and finish his work right so i was relying on that assumption that lucium would be there and i used that to hide the true purpose so the majority of the session was just role play the players met the different swords of valor started talking to him listening to stories they had and over the course of the evening each of the swords of allah would speak to one of the players they'd find something in common and then they would start to separate out the party so one of the old men went up to badar our dragonborn knight and basically asked if he wanted to have a boxing match with him he said that badar looked big and strong but he couldn't be that big and strong because i knew that badass player would immediately fall into that trap and be like i absolutely am that big and strong i will fight you right now and i did that with each of the party members and split them up around this house across two floors so later on in the night lucy and the vampire arrives which is completely expected the closest player one of the individuals downstairs separated from everyone else sees lucien calls out for help turns around and realizes that the paladins sword of valor paladin who was there with them also a vampire every attendee at this party except for lysander who had invited them and his family all the people he'd invited that weren't the party members were vampires and now the players were spread out across this entire house each isolated with a different vampire so my players had expected to have to fight this one vampire this one really powerful vampire lucien all together against him but instead they were all separated throughout the house and we're now having individual fights of their own having to fend off against these vampires what i liked most about the session was that each player was in a completely different situation and had completely different goals within that combat so godfrey was with lysander quinn and his goal was keeping the old man alive this guy wanted to don his armor and go out there and fight the vampires and godfrey was trying to basically chain him to a desk to keep him from getting himself hurt my favorite of all the fights though was ayo the azam monk she'd followed one of the vampires upstairs with lysander quinn's grandchildren to basically put them to bed and when that paladin was revealed to be a vampire ao's fight became about protecting these children and in one of the most cinematic moments of that entire campaign arc ayo threw herself in front of an empowered fireball that was intended for these kids and tanked the whole thing the explosion like ripped out half the building and ao still alive but barely sort of pulled herself up and was all battered and tatted and torn very much like gohan in the cell fight and sort of one arm limp at her side she uses her radiant blast attack her key ability to blast the vampire out the side of the building and it was super cool what i liked most about this one shot is playing with those player expectations they expected to have one kind of fight they ended up with a very different kind of fight and i think that that particular session is a really good example of how splitting the party can actually be a lot of fun the last one shot i want to talk to you about today is the village of strandford i run my campaign online most of the time and we were due to play in session and i wanted to do something a little bit special so what i did was i took the village of sanford from the film hot fuzz which is one of my favorite movies and i basically dnd'd it i created the village of strandford and instead of having the neighborhood watch that is responsible for all the terrible things behind the going ons in the town i had a medusa my players were approaching the town and on the long road that leads to the town dotted along with these humanoid statues that just looked like they were decoration you know those moss and cracks they looked weathered like they'd been there a long time and the players thought nothing of it as they're approaching there is a big banner above the entrance to the town that says strandford the happiest place in the realm and immediately the players got the reference they're like it's hot fuzz this is absolutely hot fuzz they joked that all the npcs would be super friendly and sure enough they get into town and all the npcs are really friendly and they just immediately bought in to the bit that i was going with each npc in town was named after an actor or a crew member on the set of hot fuzz and though it was filled with lots of little easter eggs and references to that film now i normally run a really quite serious and realistically toned game so this was a wild departure from what we normally do which is one of the reasons the players enjoyed it so much was unlike anything we were doing at the time and i didn't mind at all that they immediately knew that this was hot fuzz but in d i put everything there so that they would realize it it didn't break the immersion of the game world because of the way i'd set things up all these people were under a charm spell under the influence of this medusa so it made sense in the context of the intrigue in the town but having that surface level just hot fuzz connection was so much fun and i think it's a great example of how you can use movies or books or tvs anything from other media and almost directly rip it off and the players will buy into it if they're on a ship and they come across an island with a distress call or a signal fire or a ruined ship and on that island they find some sort of creature and that creature infects one of them and then when they're sailing across the ocean that creature bursts out of the person and starts chasing people down on the ship yes that is just the movie alien but the players aren't gonna mind because it's a really fun and dramatic adventure and if they spot the reference don't shy away from it lean into it add more things in to the situation to reward them for spotting it so in stratford i added all kinds of little details that weren't originally there but as soon as the players noticed that it was like hot fuzz i started pulling in more overt references that i didn't put in at first because i didn't want it to tip them off once they'd been tipped off i just threw everything in model village they're everything and they loved it i really hope this video has helped inspired you to not worry if you don't have anything planned for your next game as i said there will be a link below to my patreon where you can get even more ideas for your next game and if you want to learn about my process for making a homebrew campaign you can find it right here but until next time happy gaming

Channel: Icarus Games

Views: 73,072

Keywords: Dnd, d&d, dungeons and dragons, dungeonsanddragons, rpg, onenote campaign dnd, “Icarus Games”, tabletop, dmtips, OneNote DM, DM Bible, dnd 5e, D&D 5e, onenote dm bible, dungeon master tips, be a better game master, best dnd, how to play dnd, game master tips, dungeon master, DM Tips, DM advice, how to D&D

Id: JbQbTs7PzNw

Length: 23min 44sec (1424 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020