Tag / one-shots

by guyeatsfood

Blog Buddies: There’s a TTRPG for that!

This post is an experiment – a blog buddies experiment! – 

I met Mintrabbit through Open Hearth, and then discovered her blog – There’s a TTRPG For That!; it’s since become a frequent read, and reference point! You know how finding a game to try out on Itch is sometimes impossibly confusing? You need Mint’s games library page here. I’ve copied her letter to me here, and followed it with my reply. You should absolutely check out her stuff, whether its the blog, her playkit commissions, or the games she has on Itch.

Hey Guy!

A while back you reached out to me to let me know about something the two of us have in common: a love for one-shots. We haven’t had a chance to play in the same game together yet, but as I’ve had the chance to read over your blog, I’m noticing that we also share a diversity of game tastes, and playing games with a large pool of players.

For folks who aren’t familiar with Burn After Running, I’d describe your blog posts as concise, whether that be a review for a game that you played, or a structured adventure for a game you’re planning to run or have run in the past. I appreciate this; your writing respects my time as a reader and provides a lot of options for folks who might be looking into one-shot play.

We also have a few differences: I’m not against running trad games, but I think your tolerance is much higher than mine. You’ve also got a history of rpg games that I don’t have: you’ve been in the hobby for longer, and have had a lot of time to hone your skill.

What I want to talk about today is the Two Wolves Inside Me: the wolf that desires connected stories with development that slow-cooks the  plot, and the wolf that wants to include as many people as possible at my table. 

My social scene is rather large; there’s a lot of interested players, but when it comes to GM-ing games that lay outside of D&D, it’s hard to get folks interested in running the damn thing. I certainly don’t mind being a GM! I get to be a player every once in a while, which is nice for learning more games that I can read. That being said, to accommodate for my local group, I find that it’s easier to accommodate a larger group of players if I host one-shots. Since I’m devoting a good chunk of my free time towards this, this means that I’m spending less time devoted to a lengthy campaign, although there are many many times where I’ll read a rulebook and imagine what a story slowly built over time might look like.

I’m curious if your preference for one-shots stems from the same place as me, or if you have any other reasons for why you dedicate so much time to them!

When I run one-shots, I’m also a personal proponent of pre-generated characters. I’ve talked about my love for pre-gens in the past, and while I don’t think you need pre-gens for every game, I’m really interested in playing around with a number of different systems to see what I can do to create more time for gaming simply by providing players with pre-gens right off the bat.

For example,I recently ran a MASKS one-shot in the Spiderverse, with pre-written spider characters and a hard-framed opening scene written out to establish why they’re all working together and what some of the biggest stakes are. I hard-framed the beginning to get the group into a conflict as quickly as possible, and in 3 hours we managed to navigate two fights as well as a slower scene where the characters struggled with an older hero who conflicted with a bunch of their ideals.

I’m really appreciative of your PbtA One-Shots blog post in this regard, even if I’m not following all of your recommendations! (I particularly disagree that you can’t do pre-gens for PbtA games – I think it just depends on the game.)

I know that occasionally you’ll provide pre-gens in your one-shot resources, and I know that you occasionally play one-shots. Do you have a preference for pre-gens, or do you consider them occasionally necessary? I’d be curious if there’s any strengths or weaknesses about pre-gens that I haven’t considered.

I think you and I more closely align when it comes to running more complex games as one-shots! I resonated with the tips you shared for running system heavy one-shots. When I play games like Scion 2e or Rotted Capes, it’s easier to have the character created ahead of time, whether that’s a character made by the player or myself, because it means I can write an adventure that will allow them to shine. I also love handing some of the rules over to more experienced players, or players that like to read rulebooks, to lighten my own mental load.

In contrast, for more generative games, I feel like there’s some strong truths that I have to make clear before the players start coming up with character ideas – for example, I recently ran a game of Sunset Kills, in which I told my players that their characters should all be teenagers or younger, and asked them to come up with reasons for them all knowing each-other and hunting monsters together.

One way that I think I’d love to play with one-shots in the future is to run a number of one-shots that are all in distinctly separate systems, but are connected through setting, timeline, or plot. I’ve done a more long-form version of this in the past, with both my Monster Squad and Galaxy Squad Campaigns, but I haven’t managed to condense my themed sequences into a series of one-shots yet. 

I’m toying with the idea of one-day trying to pull together a group to play around with CAMPAIGN.FRAME, which is a setting I designed to unite a number of disparate games into one story by positing each different game as a video game, which the players will have to navigate in order to keep their city in one piece – if you’re familiar with the TV show REBOOT, this will probably make a lot more sense. I know at one point we were kind of talking about putting together a bunch of games under the same theme, and I’d be interested if there’s any themes you’d like to explore, or if there’s any groups of games that you think might be fun to play in succession.

After all this rambling, I think these are some questions I have for you.

– What is it about one-shots that keeps you invested in them? How do you balance the benefits of one-shots with the lure of the slow-cooked story?

– What makes a good pre-gen? Are there some games where you’d consider pre-gens inadvisable or unnecessary? Why or why not?

– What are the biggest shifts you have to accommodate for when running one-shots that have predetermined scenes vs one-shots for games that are more improvisatory in nature?

– What big experiments are you interested in pursuing using one-shots? What are you dreaming about?

I really look forward to hearing your thoughts, and when you reply, I’ll reblog this post with a link to it!

Hey Mint,

Thanks for getting in touch – you’ve certainly given me some food for thought there! My background in one-shots is I started playing in the UK Convention scene – for those outside of it, there’s lots of what would probably be described as mini-cons that have been running for years, with a real focus on games. 

Furnace, for example, had its twentieth anniversary a few weeks ago – and expanded to 100 attendees! It’s got 5 gaming slots, and you play or GM in all of them – and a massive variety of games on offer. I played Run Out the Guns (Rolemaster / MERP Age of Sail game from 1998), Good Society (check out the GM’s reflections on the game here), and Warhammer The Old World. I ran Daggerheart and Stewpot. So, with lots going on, there’s a focus on one-shots at these sorts of conventions that I wanted to showcase – that’s how the blog started.

I also think there are far too many TTRPGs sitting unplayed on shelves out there, for want of an opportunity to play them. One-shots let you experience a game in a few hours and properly experience it – games are made to be played, not read, and certainly not just collected!

I’ve said on here before, and I stand by it, that a good one-shot can be just as satisfying as an ongoing campaign. Different, sure, but still good. I’ve played, and run, several games that are frequently described as “not suitable for one-shots” – Burning Wheel, Ars Magica, to name a couple – and they were fine. Maybe we missed out on some of the vast development of a long campaign, but we also only had to spend 4 hours of our lives on it.

It’s interesting that you linked to the PBTA post – that was 8 years ago! I think my views on PBTA pregens have changed a bit since then – I like to provide at least part-baked PCs now, because some players will freeze when asked to pick even just a few moves.

I think pregens need three things – motivation, capability, and quirkiness – to make them really satisfying in a one-shot:

  • Motivation – they need an absolutely solid reason to embark on the adventure, that leaves no chance of backing out
  • Capability – they have to be useful, both at the things they’re meant to be good at, and whatever the game’s core activity is. If you’re going to be fighting in your one-shot, everybody needs to be at least broadly capable at fighting – I’d suggest that fighting, talking, and exploring are often core activities in fantasy games, so eahc pregen needs a way to help in those situations
  • Quirkiness – they need some arbitrary stuff that a player can hook onto. Don’t overthink this – it could just be a few items, or a weird background skill or talent. This provides some fuel for inter-party roleplay, and can often end up being a memorable part of the game.

If you’ve got all three, you’re all set!

And that’s why I’m more in favour of pregens, even for PBTA games, now. Capability should be good, at least – as long as the game design is good – but Motivation and Quirkiness sometimes don’t grab enough. And of course, having pregens made for a convention one-shot slot means more time for actually playing!

As far as more improvisatory games as one-shots, I’m firmly pro-prep for these games too – the prep might just look a bit different to what you’d normally do. The 7-3-1 technique is a good framework for making sure you’ve got stuff prepared that can generate story, as is Sly Flourish’s Lazy DM Technique. I’ve also learned, even in more traditional games with scene structure, to hold tightly to the start of the game – you need to begin with a bang – and then open up a bit, even giving multiple possible ways of resolving the situation at the end. Agon is a good example of how prepped adventures / islands can still be open ended enough to encourage multiple possible solutions.

As far as experiments in one-shots go, apart from – obviously – keeping running and playing more games: I’d like to try some episodic one-shots. I don’t mean quite West Marches-style (I don’t want my players scheduling my sessions!) – but a series of one-shots where if players want to, they can keep the PC they started with. If they join just for an episode, they can bring in a new PC, or grab a pregen. There’s probably a name for this – ensemble play? It’s not troupe-style because the actual players will vary from session to session. A community like the Open Hearth should be the ideal place to try this out, so I should look at that in 2026.

Thanks for the questions Mint! I’ve got some simple ones for you below, too – 

What are the last 5 TTRPGs you played or ran? As a fellow one-shot addict, I’m expecting this will be a diverse selection! Are these representative of your tastes?

and

What 5 TTRPGs are you itching to get to the table now? What’s stopping you? Do you want to play or run them?
Oh, and – since my readers might not know enough about it – what’s the elevator pitch for Protect the Child?

by guyeatsfood

Supercharge your One-Shot, Part 3: Deadline Fights

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.

In Part 1, we looked at hirelings and sidekicks. In Part 2, we looked at a hexcrawl structure. Today, we’re looking at improving set-piece fights by DEADLINING 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!

Continue reading →
by guyeatsfood

Future Imperfect – Why Sci-Fi One-Shots are Hard, and What to Do About It

In a week’s time, I’ll be at North Star – a science fiction TTRPG convention. It fills an excellent role in the con calendar, because sci-fi is underrepresented in convention gaming – and it’s easy to see why. It’s got some issues that you just don’t get with fantasy, or even horror, gaming – and the lack of a clear industry leader to hang your expectations around (like D&D or Call of Cthulhu) is just one of them. Sci-fi one shots can be hard to get prepped – and hard to sell to players – here’s why, and what to do about it.

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!

What in the universe is the setting?

In fantasy, you’ve got an easily-referenced source material that everyone understands – a mixed group of ne’er do wells exploring underground areas for treasure. Even when a fantasy setting is quite different to this (e.g. Glorantha) it is easily explained by listing the differences between it and D&Desque fantasy (e.g. talking ducks, lots more cows).

Sci-fi doesn’t have this central reference point. It can be pulpy or gritty, lethal or safe – and it can literally mean anything. Communicating setting and tone is really important – if you’re running a sci-fi genre that isn’t well-known, you should be really explicit about this both in your con pitch and your prep. Go over it at the start of the session as well (briefly!) and cut it to the basic details. Players need to know if they can charge into a group of stormtroopers like in Star Wars, or if they’ll be shot to pieces, like in Traveller.

An alternative, of course, is to run in an established universe that you can expect players to relate to. If you do this, though, remember that not everyone will know all the references you do. At a con, I’d say you can rely on players knowing the broad brush strokes of Star Trek, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, and maybe Doctor Who as key sci-fi tropes. Any more than that, you’d better be prepared to be explicit. I’ve had people try to explain Blake’s Seven to me more times than I care to remember, and I’m still none the wiser.

One approach is to use an IP you’d hope players are familiar with

Build Your Sandbox with Walls

The other challenge is the sheer scope of sci-fi play. In a one-shot, you want to decide early on in your prep what the geographical scope of play is – a single city, a single planet, a system, a cluster? This, again, needs to be really explicit – while you might want a picaresque jaunt across a few fantastic locations, consider how much depth you can provide to each of them. I’ve run effective one-shots on a single planet (although if you do this, stick some stuff in for the pilot PC to do), as well as in a single city. You might not need all the setting you have – just pick the good bits.

Plot is Still Plot

Similarly, the wide open nature of sci-fi themes can be daunting. Look back to your first step, and consider what kind of game your one-shot is, and how you can promote this. Daydreaming cool scenes and sticking them together works well – for example, for Snowblind, I knew I wanted a Wampa fight and a Tauntaun chase – so I fitted the rest of the plot around them. They also don’t need to be that complicated – exploring a “derelict” orbital structure that turns out to have a deadly alien / rogue AI in it is popular because it’s a good one-shot format – remember the adage (from I think Robin Laws) that in RPGs, cliché is a  good thing.

Adding NPCs to give background to the universe helps

In terms of structuring your adventure, point-crawls are often great ways to build sci-fi one-shots – 5 Room Non-Dungeons and Three Places are also good approaches. Remember to have engaging NPCs – and a good trick is to have the NPCs hint at the broader scope of the game. Your Star Trek one-shot might be all about the Neutral Zone and tangling with Romulans, so having a subplot NPC who’s an Orion pirate or a Klingon captain shows that there’s lots more going on in the universe.

So, three things that are hard about science fiction one-shots; if you’re reading this on the blog, I’ll just be setting off back from Sheffield after North Star – there’s a fair crack I’ll have more to say about this. What successes (or challenges) have you had with science fiction gaming? Be sure to let me know in the comments.

by guyeatsfood

Why Aren’t You Running D&D One Shots?

Periodically, a discussion starts online like this –

“I have a friend / colleague / partner / child who wants to try D&D. What should I run for them that’s a good introduction to the hobby?”

…and the discussion then proceeds with lots of helpful advice about what system to use, people suggesting their favourites – D100 because the probabilities are easy, Fate because the narrative aspects are easy to grab, Fighting Fantasy because they’ll know the system from the books, that sort of thing.

And they’re all wrong.

If somebody wants to play D&D, you should run D&D for them. It’s not complex, and is (finally – in its current edition) a really intuitive, straightforward, balanced system. As a wider hobby, those of us who run non-D&D games need to get over ourselves that D&D can’t be as good as our favourite game just because it’s popular, and maybe consider that actually that popularity might be in fact because it’s really quite good.

For the first time in the history of the hobby, it’s staggeringly easy to ‘get into’ D&D – Critical Role and similar AP series have made people realise how much fun it can be, and it gets generally sympathetic media coverage. So, we should just accept that D&D is a good entry point to the hobby – yes, of course, there are other games, but D&D is one of those games.

But everybody else runs D&D!

Unless your local area has a flourishing, and welcoming, D&D Adventurers League, I’d counter this that there aren’t all that many people running D&D One-Shots. There are lots of D&D Campaigns going on, but even a quick review of Adventurer’s League shows that the vast majority of adventures featured are designed to be slotted into an ongoing campaign. As previously discussed, the one-shot format (and ideally the short-one-shot format) is an easier way for newcomers to access the hobby.

But I don’t like D&D!

Don’t you? How much D&D5e have you played, or run? I know people who aren’t keen on the fantasy genre, which is fair enough, but a lot of people who claim to not like D&D tend to hold this view from previous editions. I mean, certainly, don’t run the game if you don’t like it, but be open about that, and tell your potential hobbyist that your reluctance to run D&D is because of your own tastes, and not that…

But D&D Is Rubbish! It’s not as good / realistic / fun as Runequest / Fate / Dungeon World!

Look, D&D doesn’t do all genres well. But it does do D&D Fantasy very well – as you might expect. It emulates its own genre perfectly, if you like. Sure, see previous answer, but if you have somebody who is keen to engage with the hobby, telling them that the one thing they are interested in isn’t as good as another game with lower exposure isn’t going to draw them into the hobby. Run D&D first. Then you can tell them about Runequest, if they’re into ducks.

D&D Is Too Complicated!

character sheet comparison

It’s not. One of the great design aspects in D&D5e is that the first two levels are training levels for each of the classes. First level D&D is really easy to play, 2nd level adds in one or two more options, and it’s not until 3rd that PCs really start to get some complexity and depth. Even then, it’s a nice balance where system mastery is much less important than in many other games, so it’s much more forgiving for the new player to pick up.

I do think that a lot of D&D Character Sheets look too complicated – I’ve been working on my own designs that look like the picture here (I copied them off (I think) someone from Critical Role who posted a photo of their sheets for a one-shot) – and will be posting more on this site over the next few weeks.

So Run Some D&D

So, if I can implore you, rather than complain about everyone wanting to play D&D and how they aren’t interested in your favourite system, just run some D&D. In my next post, I’ll cover some ways to make it work – because of the exposure and expected play styles, D&D one shots are a little bit different to other games.

And don’t look down your noses at D&D – it’s not becoming for the hobby for us to throw our game vs. game wars at newcomers, and as well D&D5e is really really good. I’m spending some time over the summer making sure I always have some D&D ready to run – in part because I have a few friends who are interested, and I want their first D&D experience – and their first TTRPG experience – to be awesome.