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by guyeatsfood

Supercharge your One-Shot, Part 1: Sidekicks

In this series, I’m going to be showcasing some techniques you can drop into almost any one-shot TTRPG session to improve it – even if the adventure you’re running is already published, these will make it better. Each one is minimum-prep, and guaranteed to be well worth it at the table.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

So here goes, with part 1 – 

Give the Party Sidekicks

A good sidekick is great roleplaying fodder, even if they’re a hapless Duck adventurer. Image of Crontas by John Ossoway
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by guyeatsfood

UK Games Expo 2024 – the big one

At the last minute, last Friday I decided on a one-day trip to UK Games Expo, the biggest tabletop convention in the UK. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it in the past; its sheer size makes it a bit impersonal, and as someone who’s not a fan of queuing or navigating between thousands of gamers, it’s never been an essential in the gaming calendar for me. But, as the last time I went was pre-pandemic, I decided to head over for a day, mostly in the trade hall, and see what was going down. And I actually had a really good time. Some thoughts.

Not a bad haul – credit to Goodman Games for selling me a second (travel?) copy of DCC!

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

“To Boldly Game…” – Playing Star Trek TTRPGs: A Guide to One-Shots and Campaigns

For a media franchise so big in everyone’s minds, it’s no surprise that Star Trek has seen a few TTRPGs through the years. And, as we’re currently in the Neutral Zone between editions of Modiphius’ Star Trek Adventures, I thought I’d explore a few ways to play Starfleet, using this or other systems. For me, Star Trek is a brilliant genre to play in, especially for one shots, and I’d be very happy to see more of it offered at conventions.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Powerpoint Prep

For the last convention I went to, I prepped my games differently. Normally, I rattle out a google doc, paragraphed text into scenes to get my notes in order. Like a lot of prep, the act of writing is more important than the artefact – I don’t often look at my notes at the table. 

But for Seven Hills, where I adapted two games from Tales From The Forlorn Hope, I used powerpoint. This is, to be clear, not my usual method – but it worked, and it’s something I’ll go back to. 

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

Patrons also have full access to two slide decks prepared using this method – The Impalers for TORG Eternity, and A Hard Road to Go for Neon City Overdrive, snips of which are used to illustrate this post.

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by guyeatsfood

How to Play – Guidelines for Convention Players

There’s lots of good GMing advice for convention games – lots of it on this blog – but less about being a good player. It’s a team sport, though – and if the players bring the awesome as well it just makes everything sing better. So here are four things players can and should do at conventions to help make their games more awesome for everybody.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Four Things About Daggerheart

Update: You can watch us play through the Quickstart, using v1.3 rules (so some slight tweaks to the content from what’s discussed below, and more in line with the final product) here.

I’ve had a chance recently to run the Daggerheart RPG quickstart a couple of times – the playtest rules are available at the link above, and contain far more than just the quickstart – and I thought I’d pick out a few things from it. For a first impression, to be clear, I think it’s really good – it does some things in a genuinely interesting way, and it’s a really good quickstart in terms of introducing both setting and system in a concentric way.

When this first landed, there were plenty of internet commentators giving their opinion of it – but as I’ve repeatedly said, we should judge games after playing them, not before – and for me Daggerheart is something I’ll definitely be picking up, and probably running a lot of. So, here’s four things I like about Daggerheart – specifically, the quickstart.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Ice Station Zeta Alex – a One-Shot for Stoneburner

I’ve started doing this more – sharing prep notes for one-shots. This time it’s for Fari RPGs game of space mining dwarves, Stoneburner – a rules-light solo-friendly game you’ll be seeing on Unconventional GMs soon! 

As always, it’s up to you how complete this prep is for you to run the game yourself; a combination of this and watching the Actual Play on youtube should give you a head-start though, and it might be useful for what prep could look like for your game. I started by using Stoneburner’s great random tables, and then filled them out as best I could. The scribbly map and notes are below – an essential first step in any one-shot prep!

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

Aging like fine wines: Why TTRPGs last forever

As I write this, I’ve just returned from Kraken, a baroque gaming retreat in the wilds of Brandenburg, and I’m reflecting on the games that I played. One highlight was a game of Hillfolk that I finally got to play in, run by the designer, Robin Laws. I backed Hillfolk when it was on Kickstarter, so it made me think about how long ago it was – 2013, as it turns out. 11 years later I actually get to play it.

And then I considered some of the other games I’ve played at the con, and their year of publication. Pendragon (2016, although a new edition is imminent). Feng Shui 2 (2015). Night Witches (2015) – again, I backed this, but haven’t had a chance to play it up until now.

What’s my point? Well, these games have been sitting around for a while before I’ve got round to playing or running them – and I’m very glad I have. A lot of these games have had fairly light support from their publishers, and of course following Kickstarter fulfilment a lot of games effectively end their lines. It’s easy to write off games as “I’ll never get to play this” and either ‘archive’ (put on the inaccessible shelves) or sell them.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

The Empress’s New Clothes – a Feng Shui 2 One-Shot

I’m just about ready for Spring Kraken, one of the highlights of the TTRPG gaming calendar, and so I thought I’d share my prep for one of the games I’m running there. This scenario was the very first one I ran for Feng Shui, way back in (I think) Continuum 2018, and sad to say my original notes are lost in the mists of time and changes of laptops / cloud storage. So I’ve reconstructed it!

For this scenario, you’ll want all the PCs to pick archetypes that are native to the Ancient juncture – they start there, and then transition for the finale to cheesy 1999 Hong Kong, for out-of-time comedy effect! I used the Secrets and Clues approach from Sly Flourish to prep and give some revelations to the scenario – let me know how you think they’ve worked out!

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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by guyeatsfood

“To Do It, Do It” – TTRPG Workflow

As I write this, I’m deep in prep for my games for two great conventions – Spring Kraken in Germany, and Seven Hills in Sheffield. As it stands I’m running 8 official games between these two conventions, but Kraken being what it is I’ll bring a few extra games to fill any light sessions too. That’s quite a lot of prep. 

Alongside this, I keep reading about people who are planning on running a one-shot for the first time, who sometimes never seem to get going. How do you manage to actually get the prep done? And what does ‘done’ even mean? Here are some best practices I use, which might be useful for you.

While you’re reading this, I should tell you about my Patreon. Patrons get access to content 7 days before they hit this site, the chance to request articles or content, and the chance to play in one-shot games, for a very reasonable backer level of £2 per month. If you like what you read, want to support the blog, and have the funds for it, please consider supporting here. Telling people about the blog, and sharing links/retweeting is much appreciated also – thanks!

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