Guest Post Monday!

So Mutebanshee and I decided it would be fun to trade blogs and write a guest post for each other. I asked her to write a guest post about one-shots, I'm really happy that I did because she has lots of great insight and you should totally read her blog. Now I'm gonna kick back and hang on an imaginary beach because that's what you do when someone else does the heavy lifting. 

Skullboy reached out to me a couple days ago. "Mute," he said, "I'm posting a ton of stuff about one shots, and you are so smart, I really need you to tell me how to run a good single session game!"

I looked at him through the dark void of internet wires, shook my head, and replied, "No, Skullboy, you already have the session within you."

I might have left it at that, but I really like rambling on about my favorite hobby, so even though I already fixed the problem in a single, concise sentence, I decided to write several more paragraphs about the subject. Sam is already talking about a lot of system things that work well in one shots, and I'm going to leave that stuff to him. Instead I'm going to focus more on my favorite topic... improvising as a game master during a one shot adventure. 

So, stretch out your eyes and open your brains, and join me on this exploration of story telling during a single session adventure.

What is a one shot?

Okay, we all know that a one shot is a single session adventure. That's not really what I mean by the question. Perhaps the better question would be, "What is this one shot?" Because there are many reasons to run a one shot adventure. You might be trying to show off a new system at a convention where you have hours and hours to play. You might be doing a demo night at a local game store, and have only two hours to fill. You might be fascinated by a new system that doesn't fit into your current line up of games, but you will end up playing it, even if it costs you your soul (Numenera, I'm looking at you. Somehow, someday). You might just be hanging out with friends and decide to sit down for some new adventures.

I ask this question first, because the purpose of the game very much determines the tone, style, and type of game you want to play. If you are working with new people that have zero table top experience, and have only two hours to sit down and play, you want to run a much simpler game than you might want to at a convention where experience gamers are looking for new experiences. Answering this question should help getting the shape of your game in mind.

The elevator pitch

Now that you know what type of game you are running, it's time to start thinking about the setting, basic plot, and rpg system that you will run. This is the elevator pitch, and will act as your north star while making decisions in game. It's important to keep this simple, and I really like using random tables for this. A great example of a random adventure idea generator is used in Lasers and Feelings, and can come up with pitches like: "Alien Brainworms bond with an ancient space ruin to fix everything."

When you are pitching your game to potential players, I recommend including the system. So my pitch would become "A Lasers and Feelings game where alien brain worms bond with an ancient space ruin to fix everything." 

Game Prep

The amount of preparation you need to put into a one shot is going to vary widely, determined by both the purpose of the game, and the system that you are running. In Lasers and Feelings, I would do maybe five minutes of preparation, and come up with a list that looks a bit like this: 

• The Alien Brain worms are the remnant of a very powerful alien empire that once ruled the entire galaxy. 
• The ancient space ruin is the lost temple, the only place that the brain worms could reproduce. At the heart of the temple is a spawning pool where water mixes with an incredibly rare element: Element Delta.
• If the Alien Brain worms get to the center of the temple and manage to reproduce, they will once again attempt to conquer the galaxy.
• Possible Moral Question: Do the players destroy the temple and billions of years of culture, or do they find a better (but harder) way to stop the brain worms?

That's it. If I was running a grittier system like Dungeons and Dragons, I would prepare three to six encounters that I thought were likely to happen. I'd come up with something interesting to put at the center of the temple (maybe an encounter waste deep in brackish water fighting some sort of mother worm, while new born birth worms try to crawl into the character's ears), and I'd come up with a couple other encounters as well. While designing the encounters, I would always look back to the elevator pitch to make sure the encounters fit the theme and mood I was going for.

It's not your story

This is the most important rule for any adventure, but doubly so for a one shot. It's so important, that it probably should have gone up higher in the post. But if you have read this far, and only take away one thing from this guest post, it's that the adventure you are going to run is not your story.

Your job as a game master is to facilitate that opportunity for your players to tell the story that they want to tell. And that may not be the story you thought you were going to run. The last time I ran Lasers and Feelings I had my elevator pitch all set up. Lasers and Feelings is never a serious system, but I guessed there was going to be some opportunity for some serious, poignant moments. I had a couple moral dilemmas that I thought were interesting and would add some flavor to the game.

But then my players sat down to make characters, and they all decided that they were space adventurers looking for the most attractive aliens. They were out to coitus where no one had ever coitused before. At first I started having a mini panic. It was one of those, "Oh God, what is happening?" moments. But then I took a deep breath and remembered that I had a pitch.

The basic pitch of the game I ran didn't change. The threat was still the same, even the consequences if the threat wasn't stopped were still the same. But you bet that the captain of a Fleet Ship was a sexy penguin captain. During this game, my players decided to team up with the bad guys, decided three quarters of the way through that the bad guys were wrong after all, and then used a time traveling device that could have destroyed the universe to travel back in time... all to warn their captain not to sleep with an alien ooze that would leave him incapacitated for months and months. The last line of the game was something like, "you step out of the time vortex just as the ooze forms a massive penetrating shape. It raises the shape to plunge into the captain's back door, when you yell, "no, captain! That alien has an ooze transmitted disease!" You just saved your captain, the best coituser of you all."

It wasn't at all the story I thought I would be telling. Even though my pitch never changed, and the threat I had prepared never changed, the entire theme and mood did. And you know what? It was one of the most exciting games I've ever played.

Obviously if you are playing with people that don't want things to get graphic, you can tell the players at the table, "hey, we're going to keep everything pg in this game." If you want, you can tell people what sort of mood you are trying to achieve, or the concepts that you want to explore. But once you start in with the introduction to the game, it isn't your game any more. It belongs to the players, and you are there to help them make the most of it they possibly can.

This point is so incredibly important in a one shot, because it seems so counter intuitive. I know tons of Dungeon Masters that think a one shot needs to be more contained than a campaign. They want to know what every scene is going to be, and have a map of the adventure that they can rely on. And you know what? That's one style of gaming. But it isn't my style, it isn't Improvisational gaming. 

If you are going to try and map everything out, I offer this, every good GM needs to be open to player input and suggestions. Remember that players might come up with ways to solve a problem you didn't expect, and remember to be open to that idea. Every GM runs into situations where they need to improv at some point, no matter how prepared they are.

So, to sum things up, remember: Why are you running the game? What is your elevator pitch? How much prep do you need? And remember that in the end, it's not your story.

I could probably ramble on for another five pages, but enough is enough. Stop reading, and go play a single session game!