Heres how you run a one shot adventure that lasts around three hours or so, this is a formula that
works in all sorts of different settings, games, whatever, its universal advice for how to run a
game, bare bones, here we go. The First Hour.
This is where the player characters interact with each other and Non
Player Characters who give them advantages if the players engage in actual role play.
For example, the player characters meet in a tavern, each player describes their
character and they have some basic interactions together, you present them with the objective
of the adventure in the form of a passive notice board, or an overheard conversation, or they will
be actively approached by a non-player character who presents the information as soon as they can
in the conversation. Non player characters who the player characters interact with are resources,
each of them will have important and useful information about phase two or phase three
of the one shot encounter, those with info on phase two, the second encounter will have an
emphasis on terrain and interactive stuff, problem solving, puzzles or traps, the characters might
face a delay or some damage or they may, and this is critical to understand... they may add
or subtract from the difficulty of phase three, the third or Boss encounter. The price of failing
phase two is they don't get an advantage on the boss encounter, they don't learn something about
the interactive encounter location, they turn a potential ally into an enemy, they miss the vital
clue to disarming a trap or turning the trap into something they can use against the boss monster,
you get the general idea.. at no point should the price of failing be a block
to moving forward in the adventure completely, so avoid any skill checks or combats or guessing
games where that could be a result, otherwise your adventure may very well stall completely
and nobody will be having a good time, phase two is also the second hour of the adventure, so you
will want to offer a break for everyone to get a drink, fresh air, walk around, answer messages
and just chat for a while before getting back into the game for phase three, the boss fight.
Its also important to note that any combat or damage in phase one or two of the one shot is
Non-lethal, or a character who dies unexpectedly has some miracle occur or resource to use to bring
them back to life so they can get to phase three, the combat is just an introduction to combat to
get the player prepared and familiar with their character's abilities and to work out how their
characters work together, so the enemies will not work very well, they will have low damage
output but high resiliance to damage so it takes a while to take them down, just long enough for
the player characters to experience one of the cool aspects of their character build,
as the game master, your objective is to make phase two tricky, entertaining and also
educational, as you are preparing the players to think about more than just the hit point total of
the boss monster and getting their special attack combo off before they take the boss monster down.
Also, if you let the players know the creatures they fight in phase two may have vital information
about a weakness of the boss monster, or can be turned into allies... as a potential resource,
then they now may fight to subdue, or soak up some damage in order to calm the situation
down and get the opponents to turn into allies. Phase three is where it all comes together and
your objective is to present a potentially lethal threat within a highly interactive encounter
location, with potential allies or side enemies (what you would call minions or complications),
one of my favorites is a guide minion the players have not investigated who turns out to have been
working for the boss monster the whole time, an evil kobold leading the player characters into the
lair of a Dragon is a great example, the kobold is very handy to get past encounter number two,
but they won't learn how to turn a difficult encounter to their advantage in the boss fight
with the dragon, and worse, the kobold is going to sabotage them really effectively
right before combat starts, which may very well result in characters getting killed.
This is a one shot adventure, it is OK to kill off player characters in the boss fight in hour three,
the players should be aware of this going into the One shot, characters may die. One option I
endorse is making a non-player character who accompanies the player characters a
back up playable character for a player who has their character killed to take over,
just so they get to keep doing stuff during the game.. the backup character should always be low
level and pretty feeble, the player now has to be a bit more cautious and sneaky, of they can
charge in and get another character murdered in a hilarious way, it's their choice of course.
The final encounter may take longer than one hour, it probably could be the lead into a
continuation of the game if everyone has had a good time and gelled together really well.
So there you have it, this framework, three phases over three hours, the introduction phase,
the environment and practice fight phase and the final Boss Fight phase, is very open to
customisation and adaption to most game systems, it is fundamental storytelling nuts and bolts,
its also great to keep in mind whenever planning an adventure, because each element
has a reason for being there and it provides a consistancy that players can master as well,
if they know the framework, they know that they should be interacting with non-player characters,
trying to subdue opponents and turn them to their side in phase two,
to not hold anything back and expect lethal consequences with good grace in Phase three,
but try to negotiate a miraculous character save in phase one or phase two.
That is my best advice for how to run a one shot game session.
Have fun. My name is AJ Pickett,
thanks for listening and as always, I will be back with more for you, very soon.